Bridge Building
by CrossesWithHonor
Summary: A system on the far side of the Solarian League from Manticore discovers a wormhole bridge that connects to the Star Empire of Manticore, and is forced to build new alliances if they want their plans for surviving the fall of the League to prosper.
1. Prologue

Events in the more recent novels (and a few notes from the short story in _House of Steel_) have conspired to make this story slightly AU; when I started working on it (in late 2010) that was not the case, but I can't always guess where David Weber is going to go with the main plotline (and I've never been able to stick with writing one story long enough to just get something done) and in a few cases I decided that it was better to leave things alone (mostly) than to try and retrofit the story. I've tried to minimize the number of people holding an idiot ball in this story; all the fleet commanders I've created or appropriated from the main Honorverse are competent within the bounds of what they know – even the ones working for the Solarian League Navy.

All non-original characters are David Weber's, as is the Honorverse.

**Prologue: Discovery**

The Rivendell Navy survey ship _Cordellia Naismith_ was conducting its mission in a star system that on the surface seemed to hold nothing of consequence, though it was only a day's journey from Rivendell itself. There were no planets that humans could live on outside of a sealed habitat, even with 20th-century Post Diaspora terraforming and bioengineering. Its asteroid belts had no minerals that were not more easily obtained in the Rivendell system or other nearby inhabited systems. And the initial surveys of the system – which the Rivendell Republic had commissioned as a matter of course centuries ago, since it was very near their star nation – had not shown any major astrophysical anomalies.

However, a series of recent discoveries had served to remind Rivendell's government that a lot had been learned since they first tried to look for wormholes in the systems they controlled or those nearby. Hence a new generation of surveys had been commissioned. And this time, the surveys had found something.

"Well, captain?" Dr. Kara Fey asked. "Are we ready to go through?" She was the Republic's second-leading expert on wormhole junctions. Since the Republic did not possess any wormhole junctions of its own – until now, anyway – that was a somewhat dubious honor by comparison to some parts of the galaxy, but she was well acquainted with the somewhat bizarre mathematics of hyperspace physics. Despite the lack of local wormholes, there were more than enough in other parts of the Solarian League for her to study, let alone things like the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, and she had.

"As ready as we'll ever be. Rig the ship for junction transit." Commander Price of the Rivendell Navy ordered. And they jumped blind.

A few hours later Dr. Fey and the ships' computers had figured out where they were. The system's designation – no one had bothered to give it a proper name – was a mostly meaningless string of numbers and letters. But the nearest inhabited system was Spindle – recent site of a confrontation between the Solarian League Navy and the Star Empire of Manticore.

"Well, I'm not sure if the Council is going to decide we're heroes or trouble-makers for this. Do we tell the locals on our own, or sit quietly here until we've got the path home charted and then let the political types decide what to do?" He didn't, everyone on board understood, even think of kicking that decision all the way back to Earth and the Chamber of Stars. Since referring the decision back to Old Earth would actually be leaving to the unelected bureaucrats who actually ran the Solarian League (because someone had to, and the Constitution's provisions made it all but impossible for the government to do it) and none of them had the slightest thought about what was good for Rivendell, there was no chance that option would be taken.

The League's assistance had been a gift from God when the Rivendell Navy had been trying to clear out the piracy that had been somewhat endemic in the region around where their colony ship arrived – the Rivendell Colony Trust had been able to prevent claim jumpers from stealing their planet out from under them – if the frigate _Faramir_ that the Trust had commissioned had been a hair less well-armed, they might not have been able to do so – but that didn't prevent less than good neighbors from moving in nearby. Fortunately the Republic had been advanced enough that by the time the League was expanding into their part of the Shell, it had offered full membership and the League Navy's services in… discouraging bad actors.

But that didn't mean that the Republic was unaware of what was happening to the League. Indeed, they had spent decades quietly preparing against a collapse they hoped would never come. Lately, though, it seemed more and more likely that collapse would happen.

"You're the captain. But as much as I'd like to go on ahead, I think we have to report back with this." She said. And they did.


	2. Chapter 1

1

It had, as both the captain and the astrophysicist expected, taken a few weeks for the Council to decide exactly who they wanted to send through the new-found wormhole bridge, and what they wanted to tell the Star Empire. There was, after all, almost nothing they could do to prevent Manticore from claiming the Talbot Quadrant end of the bridge. In truth, there wasn't much they could do to prevent Manticore from claiming both ends, though no one was likely to admit that. They could do a lot more than Manticore might suspect of a League member self-defense force, but in the end Rivendell's latest and greatest wasn't up to what the Star Empire had demonstrated lately, and even if it had been, the Rivendell Navy had less than fifty of the wall.

Still, they were both in the second transit through the wormhole, as well as the first. They just had more company the second time.

[break]

"How did they decide which of us got to stay here working up a new squadron and which one of us gets to let a small part of the galaxy know part of what we're up to?" Vice-Admiral Steve Carroll told his friend over the comm.

"You lost the toss." Admiral Wesley Marrone said. In truth, he had both seniority and a squadron that was already worked up, by virtue of having been completed nine months ago, instead of mere weeks. Though that was a fairly good argument to leave Marrone back at Rivendell and let someone else take his newest fully worked up squadron and screen through a newly discovered wormhole bridge.

"No, I understand. I just wish I didn't." Carroll said.

"If the Council could figure out a way to get Caitlin to Manticore, she'd be going instead of me." But Admiral Caitlin Michaels commanded the Rivendell Sector Frontier Fleet detachment of the Solarian League Navy. The Council of Elrond could not give her orders, and certainly couldn't remove her from her command. "They want someone as senior as possible close to the center of this mess to be sure, but Caitlin's going to get the initial activation code before I get to Manticore."

"I never really believed it would happen. Which is crazy to say since I'm in command of ships that would not exist if the Council weren't expecting things to go bad soon – at the very least, we wouldn't be trying to replace a fleet of wallers no more than forty years old over only five years - but there it is." Carroll said. The dreadnoughts the Rivendell Navy considered in need of urgent replacement given recent political and technological developments had been unquestionably state of the art when laid down, even if not many people were aware of it.

"No one with any sense wants to see the League fall apart. But it keeps heading in that direction just the same, Steve. We can't change that." Marrone told his old friend. Certainly Rivendell had tried. But a handful of voices shouting in the Chamber of Stars were a long way from being able to really change things.

[break]

"Admiral, my tac witch tells me we've got a pretty significant hyper footprint incoming on an odd vector." Commander Naomi Kaplan relayed to her admiral.

"More significant than seventy-odd of the wall?" She said, remembering the last unscheduled major hyper footprint to appear in her command area.

"Yes and no."

Michelle Henke looked a glare through the viewscreen. Commander Kaplan continued.

"It looks like six small SDs or large dreadnaughts … all of a pod design we've never seen before. And screen. And Abigail says the paint's not dry on the ships of the wall." Which presented the admiral with a difficulty. A single squadron of the wall with neither missile pods nor multi-drive missiles wouldn't stand a chance against her command. A squadron of her own Navy's first-line pod super-dreadnaughts – or even Haven's, on the other hand, would likely manage her own force just as easily. At least, until her reinforcements arrived. This was, in all probability, something in between.

"Well, let's see what they have to say for themselves." She said, then turned to a tech. "Patch me into the nearest Hermes buoy."

"Yes, ma'am." He said.

"Unidentified warships, this is Admiral Gold Peak of the Royal Manticoran Navy. Please state your intentions."

Gravitic communication relays travelled a little over sixty times the speed of light. But that still meant there was some delay between the inner system, where her fleet kept watch on a few score captured ships, and the hyper limit. Michelle had no doubt one of her subordinates was already putting together a plan to fight the newcomers. But it didn't seem quite right to her just yet.

The woman whose image was relayed to her appeared tall, blonde, fair-skinned, and not in anything that looked like a uniform to Michelle Henke. "I am Arial Blanchet, secretary of state for the Rivendell Republic. I bear a message from the Council of Elrond." She giggled. "I'm sorry; I always wanted to say that."

Admiral Henke tapped a few keys next to her command chair to refresh her memory of the Rivendell Republic. Older than Manticore, though its colony ship actually left Earth later; it was somewhat closer to Sol. Had grown quite a bit before joining the league – even launching two secondary colonies of Rohan and Gondor, and two one-time pirate havens had been 'annexed' with a little assistance from the Rivendell Navy (and in the second case, the Solarian League Navy as well). A large minority of the spots on the initial colony ship had been auctioned off and even raffled off at various science fiction and fantasy conventions, hence the name of the planet and some of the… oddities in their culture, and the executive branch of the Republic's government going by the name of 'the Council of Elrond'. Rivendell maintained one of the larger and more modern self-defense forces in the League, historically due to local piracy but in ONI's estimation more recently likely more out of inertia and pride than anything else. The SLN apparently regarded the Rivendell Navy as something of a comic opera force more interested in looking pretty and having fancy new toys than in actually fighting anything, but a few hints here and there suggested otherwise. Rivendell – and its colonies and conquests – had relatively light gravity and most of the habitable regions tended to temperate, rainy climates, which tended to produce the tall, fair-skinned people that, combined with their world's name, gave Rivendellians their nickname of 'Elves'.

The Rivendell Navy (which the Republic continued to refer to its self-defense force as, annoying some elements within the SLN) sent a fair number of observers to both the first and second conflict with Haven; it was unknown what conclusions those observers had drawn. _Clearly they had sent back something, though. It's unlikely they dreamed up those DN(P)s entirely on their own._

"And that is? We're a long way from Rivendell. I would think it would be faster to send any message for my Queen directly to Manticore."

"No, it would not." Blanchet said. "That is the first part of the Council's message. We've discovered a wormhole bridge between an uninhabited system in Republic space and an uninhabited system here in the Quadrant."

"I imagine that it would be difficult to sit on that for long." Gold Peak replied.

Connecting wherever their bridge let out to the Lynx terminus of the Manticore wormhole junction would put Rivendell's commerce halfway to anywhere in human space, or near enough. No, she doubted a non-totalitarian government could keep something that valuable under wraps for very long.

"That doesn't explain bringing a squadron of the wall with you when you drop in on us, though. Or building those DN(P)s you've got there – you couldn't have suspected your bridge existed when you commissioned them, let alone that it would lead here." Michelle continued.

"No. They were built mostly due to regular modernization of the Rivendell Navy – your Operation Buttercup caused us to throw out the plans for our next generation of ships of the wall – which were just about ready to go into production – and start over; these are what we came up with. And also due to some concerns that I'll be discussing with Baroness Medusa later – she is the Crown Governor for this region, correct?"

Mike nodded. And then she considered that there were two very good reasons for the Rivendellians to let Manticore know they both had DN(P)s and had enough of them that they were willing to send a squadron of them on a diplomatic mission. The first was probably to deter any possible Manticoran ambitions to claim both ends of the bridge. They wouldn't think their new ships made them equals of the RMN – not unless they had some surprises ONI didn't even suspect, anyway – but fighting someone who thought it worthwhile to build a fleet of pod wallers was a whole different problem than fighting the SLN or a less capable Self-Defense Force. And the second was probably to send the message that Rivendell _could_ build them – and hence could be real, valued ally, not just a source of warm bodies and possibly cash. And if she was putting things together correctly…

"I suppose that's my cue to hand you over to the politicians. Though if you could introduce me to the commanding officer of your squadron before that, I'd appreciate it."

"With pleasure. Admiral Wesley Marrone, this is Admiral Michelle Henke, Countess Gold Peak. She wanted to speak with you while I deal with the unimportant government officials." While Blanchet had very much looked the part of an 'Elf' – Michelle had almost expected pointed ears given the rest of her features, Marrone – despite the Rivendell Navy's green uniforms – was another story. In truth, he was a relatively large man – he looked a lot like Thomas Caparelli might have if he had grown up on a light-grav world. And was about her age, she thought, assuming he was a second-generation prolong recipient, which seemed a safe bet. There were very few third-generation prolong recipients about Michelle's age (she was one of them herself, but she was fifth in line to the Manticoran throne) and as far as she knew no third- generation prolong recipients were old enough to look like a pre-prolong thirty in any case. Beyond that, no Rivendellian who looked like a fifty or sixty year old second-generation prolong recipient would actually be a forty-ish first-generation prolong recipient unless he was an immigrant from a less developed world.

"I'm honored." He said.

"I thought I might offer to treat you and your staff to dinner tomorrow, if it would be convenient."

"And it would be somewhat ungracious of me not to accept. Besides, we should be here long enough to for me to return the favor."

[break]

A week later, Admiral Henke and her staff officers were aboard Admiral Marrone's flagship – the _RNS_ _Moiraine Damodred_, and getting the grand tour. "_Moiraine Damodred, Siuan Sanche, Leane Sharif, Nynaeve al'Maera, Egwene al'Vere, _and_ Elayne Trakand_? They sound like people's names, but… a bit off, somehow." Michelle asked.

"Something wasn't in your ship's files on Rivendell?" He answered. "Rivendell Navy tradition is that warships are named after characters from fantasy fiction. The idea was to keep our founding traditions intact, and to avoid ever naming a ship after a politician. It goes all the way back to the frigate _Faramir_ that Rivendell Colony, Limited had keeping squatters away when our slowboat showed up. Another tradition is that the director of our bureau of shipbuilding picks a fictional organization for each class of warships started under his or her tenure, and the ships are all named after members of that group. In the case of our new dreadnaughts, they're from an early 1st century Ante Diaspora series called the Wheel of Time, and a group called the _Aes Sedai_. We've gone as far back as Greek mythology, and as recent as some 19th-century Post Diaspora sources, though there is a pretty strong prejudice for using works where the author is no longer living as the source. The current person in charge, though, is fairly obsessed with the 1st and 2nd centuries ante diaspora, though."

"I wouldn't think that would be unusual on a planet named Rivendell." She said. Manticoran naval officers were generally somewhat more partial to naval-oriented fiction, whether set on Old Earth's oceans or in space, but she could still catch a Tolkien reference.

"Oh, it's not. The _Wheel of Time_ might be to blame for all the massive multi-volume epics that have grown up since then, but since everyone moved to electronic publishing and didn't have to worry about a lot of the issues with printing or selling really long books went away. Sometimes they go more obscure, though." He explained.

"I don't suppose you can explain the spacing of the pod bays on this thing? It seems like they're a bit spread out from the core." She asked, returning the topic to the vessel she was getting a tour of.

He smiled. "That's because she doesn't have a pod core. She has a pod shell." That was technically a secret, but would be obvious from any careful external analysis of the ship. Marrone was quite sure Manticoran naval intelligence would figure that out on their own. And unless Rivendell's office of shipbuilding had missed a serious weakness of the design, he suspected everyone else would be copying the format for their podlaying wallers. It made the pods and their launching rails more vulnerable to battle damage, and made laying out the sensor arrays and broadside energy weapons a bit tricky, but it eliminated most of the vulnerabilities a pod core gave a traditional SD(P). In fact, those vulnerabilities and the strictly limited combat endurance of any pod battle cruiser – unless you wanted to make it as large as Gold Peak's _Nike_-class ships anyway – were why the Rivendell Navy had decided against building the pod format BC that had been the alternative to what became the _Warder_ class.

"I suspect BuShips would like to get a good look at these, then." Henke said. "I don't think we'd go ahead and use your design as-is, but a solid pod dreadnaught we could adapt to our tech base would give us a lot of flexibility."


	3. Chapter 2

2

"We have a problem." Colin told his father. "It looks like a new player has joined the game."

"How is that?" Albrecht said.

"We always counted on the defeat of the SLN and some events we are … encouraging … to break up the league and drive key systems into our waiting arms. But we always expected the vast majority of the current members of League to remain neutral until the Factor was established as the de facto successor to the League. Some were certain to oppose us, of course, but if more than a handful aligned themselves with Manticore, things could get very messy."

"And you think someone significant is preparing to do that?"

"A wormhole bridge was just discovered that effectively connects the Rivendell Republic with Manticore's sector capital in Talbott, which is what brought them to my attention. But once my people started digging, it's become clear that the elves are somewhat concerned about the future of the League."

"Go on."

"Point to the first – nearly 90% of the Frontier Fleet personnel in the Rivendell Sector are citizens of Rivendell itself or the other worlds that were members of the old Rivendell Republic. It's not unusual for a sector fleet to be mostly locals, but it is unusual for the percentage to be that high. And the sector's commanding Admiral is Rivendellian as well, like her father and grandmother before her. Which is to say that if there is no more Solarian League, that fleet is effectively Rivendell's. Not the best ships, but few have better, and for all its… difficulties… the SLN, especially Frontier Fleet, is a quite professional force.

"Point to the second – the Rivendell Navy has always been relatively large and modern, even after nominally being demoted to a self-defense force when the Republic joined the League. And they have recently taken delivery of the first units of their new _Aes Sedai_ class dreadnaughts. None of our people have managed a good look at them, but they're clearly a pod design. The companion _Warder_ class battle cruisers are not, but at the very least they're on the large side for battle cruisers from anyone but Manticore.

"And point to the third – after discovering this wormhole bridge, they decided to send a military and diplomatic mission through it. Which strongly suggests that they plan to ally themselves with Manticore."

"You're right, son. That very much suggests the elves are going to be a problem. Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with it?"

"Maybe. Complicated operations that brush up against Manticore haven't turned out well for us, Oyster Bay excepted."

"But you're proposing one anyway."

"We don't have enough local forces to deal with them on our own or through the Alignment. The League has never liked self-defense forces that insist on calling themselves a navy, especially when they keep more than one or two squadrons of the wall around. It also occurred to me that our troublesome princess wasn't too far from Rivendell."

The Princedom of Sanderson was something of a sore point for the Alignment. The ruling dynasty had been targeted a few centuries ago as occupying a strategic position just outside the League and having enough strength to avoid becoming a Frontier Security protectorate. And indeed Prince Martin III and Princess Janet IV had been quite amicable to the Alignment's offer. But it had been clear enough that Jason II, star line genetics or no, could not be brought anywhere near as deep inside the onion as his mother had been. And Jason III would have approved of even less of the Alignment than his father would have (had he known it existed). Which meant that any pretenses of having any control over the Princedom had long been eliminated from Albrecht's plans, but it didn't mean they had been forgotten. With the very ambitious Princess Harriett II on the throne and doing her best to acquire the military advances coming out of the Haven Sector for her own empire-building, there might well be something they could do.


	4. Chapter 3

3

Admiral Caitlin Michaels was not a happy woman. It had nothing to do with the superficial trappings of her job. The 'tower' that housed her office and those of all the staff that kept a major Frontier Fleet detachment and training facility running was miniscule by core world standards – or even Manticoran – but it was one of the tallest buildings on Rivendell. Her fellow Rivendellians had seen the contra-grav towers of Earth and Beowulf and decided they wanted nothing to do with them. The overwhelming majority of Rivendell's citizens lived in single-family homes, fairly widely separated. With the teleconferencing capabilities available on any first-tier world – and Rivendell was very much that – an extremely high percentage of jobs could be done from the comfort of home if people wanted to. And Rivendellians generally did; they preferred open space to a few extra rooms in an apartment.

She was, in fact, busy trying to keep future events from decimating Rivendell's sector detachment. No new orders had come yet, but she was aware of what the first response of most back on Earth was likely to be to Crandall's defeat, and the likely alternative plans that would be proposed when that failed. She was as aware of events back on earth as the distance allowed. Save for any time that could be gained by the newly discovered wormhole bridge that she most definitely did not officially know about, at any rate. But she still didn't expect to see, buried in an innocuous personal email, the preliminary activation code for White City.

She'd known it was coming. White City had gone from a worst-case contingency plan when her grandmother held her job, to regrettable long-term planning by her father, to something she'd very much expected to activate in her lifetime. Even three years ago, she would have thought that activation was at least thirty years in the future and a duty she might be able to hand off to the next Michaels to command the sector fleet. But with Beowulf clearly on the road to secession, undeclared war with Manticore, whatever Barregos and Rozsak were up to in Maya Sector, and the wormhole bridge to Spindle. The League was collapsing, and no one back downside on Rivendell thought one system – or even five systems, if Rivendell's daughter colonies and former conquests counted, and they probably did – and one Frontier Fleet sector detachment could push hard enough back to stop that. Making the Republic an island of peace and security in the coming chaos, though, was something they believed was possible.

And part of the plans for that was White City. The first stage – and the last point where it would be possible in theory to back down – was simply to do anything possible to prevent dispersing her fleet, and expedite removal of any personnel considered unlikely to back the final stage of White City. It helped that the overwhelming majority of sailors under her command were, in fact, Rivendellians. Most of those who were not had no intrinsic loyalty to the Solarian League; that was true for most officers and almost all enlisted in the SLN, but Caitlin doubted the personnel office truly appreciated how bereft of old fleet families her command was. So that was all well and good. But the final stage of White City was the mutiny of an entire sector detachment. It would probably be the first time that happened. It would not, she feared, be the last.

If all went according to plan, it was going to be one of the strangest mutinies in history. At least initially, her fleet was going to be doing the exact same thing it had been before, just in service of Rivendell rather than the League. Frontier Fleet's anti-piracy and disaster relief work was very real, and very important. If the SLN could no longer provide that service, someone else would have to. And it would have been somewhat suspicious if the Rivendell Navy had maintained the capacity to replace the SLN sector detachment out of its own resources.

Redundancy with Battle Fleet was another matter entirely. A handful of worlds out in the provinces could hijack a Frontier Fleet detachment, given enough time. New families did creep into the dynasties, as the League grew, and as more 'fleet families' came into being. There had been three generations of Michaels family scions in the SLN before anyone had even conceived of White City. And a century later, command of the Rivendell Sector Detachment was pretty much hereditary in the Michaels line. For now, anyway; once White City was fully active, that practice was going to be discontinued. She fully expected her son to follow in her footsteps anyway, given what she knew of his capabilities and the next generation of the officer corps, but she intended to make him work for it.

For now, though, she composed a simple holiday message to her captains and staff. A message just as innocuous as the one she had received. And which passed on essentially the same message. And when she hit send, the period of greatest risk of discovery would begin.


	5. Chapter 4

4

Keeping a squadron of the wall hidden had been less tricky than Marrone expected. Granted, it helped when there were several hundred other ships of the wall in-system to divert attention. Even if the SLN had discovered a squadron of dreadnaughts of an unfamiliar design, they almost certainly would have assumed they were Manticoran.

And it helped that Manticore-B was off-limits to foreign civilian traffic. Marrone had winced as reports of the battle came through. Almost all of his officers and enlisted had served in the SLN for a time, even if with very few exceptions that had been in Frontier Fleet, not Battle Fleet. It wasn't easy to think of them as if not the enemy, then unknowing pawns of the enemy.

[break]

"That was an interesting disaster." Rear Admiral Starks told his staff, after his division and a minimal screen had just been 'killed' by Marrone's squadron.

"ONI is sure they really have everything they showed in that exercise? This wasn't just some admiral trying to show us what could happen if the Sollies got really clever?" His staff tactical officer asked.

"That's what they tell me. I understand BuWeaps took Admiral Marrone's squadron out to the far side of Gryphon for a series of performance tests and live fire exercises. Mostly to give Allied command a good idea of what the Rivendell Navy had, but also, in the short term, to set up this exercise."

"Maybe, but those missiles were the next best thing to Mark 23s with a drive stage cut off. And if their recon drones weren't Ghost Rider, they sure as heck were better than we've seen from anybody else – even Haven or the Andies. I know why we have them. But why do they?"

"Interesting thing they told us. The basic theory behind our super-dense fusion bottles came from a paper from a Dr. Isildor Noldar – of the Celebron Institute of Technology on Rivendell. And the Rivendell Navy was aware of the military implications at the same time we were, if not sooner. In fact, they say they had fusion-powered missiles before they knew we did."

"Now you're pulling my leg."

"No one ever faced a Rivendell Navy _Assassin_-class dreadnought in battle. But I gather they had fusion powered, if still single drive, missiles, at least in the 18 that were refit after they got their reports back from the first war with Haven. As to why? Well, they expected to need the capability to fight off a warlord with a substantial part of the League navy under its control. If you're worried about taking on an enemy that outnumbers you by that much, it tends to have interesting effects on your R&D, as we well know."

[break]

"I don't know what the people at General Dynamics are going to think of what we're going to bring back." Admiral Marrone said as he led a Manticoran delegation through _Moiraine Damondred_. "But I think they'll be happy for a new customer and an answer to our observers' big questions. Namely how you powered your LACs – our _Windfinder_ class carriers got off to a late start because we couldn't figure out how you did it and we didn't want to accept something like the Havenite _Cimettere_ design. We decided we needed the capability, but neither the _Windfinder_s nor their LACs are as … elegant… as we'd like."

"I'm sure they had at least as many surprises as your wallers and even your battle cruisers did. It's hard to understate how much tunnel vision we've had out here in focusing mostly on each other. Any leading-edge designs from outside that bubble are worth a lot even if they can't match the combat power of our closest equivalent." Admiral Hemphill told him. "And this is what you did while you were trying to hide things from the SLN?"

"The _Callandor_ missiles are smaller than the Capharact-Cs Technodyne gave the SLN, or even the system defense pod missiles they gave to Monica; it shouldn't be obvious that they're a true dual-drive missile until you actually see them fired. We used our own format for a pod shell rather than copying the hollow core design that you invented. Our Dreamwalker remote platforms are smaller and distributed along the lines of Halo rather than using one or two larger platforms like your Keyhole, though we carry more of them. It's rather hard for anyone to notice software upgrades. And we put even more effort than usual into creating the impression our ships are more beautiful than practical. Still, we have a paper study for a still-hypothetical _Asha'man_ class SD designed with the assumption that we don't have to hide things from the SLN anymore. It's mostly a scaled up _Aes Sedai_, but there are a few differences."

"Do you think you'll end up building them, our _Invictus_ class, or an all-new design?"

"Everyone at General Dynamics will _want_ to build an all-new design. We do have some of the foibles we're rumored to, after all. But if everyone is convinced we can't spare the time, I'm sure we can go ahead and build an existing design instead. 42 _Aes Sedai_ and 18 _Assassins_ that everyone thinks we're decommissioning would have been enough for White City as we envisioned it. For what you're planning, we're going to need more than that."

The tour continued through ship. One feature of the rec deck prompted a question. "What's this for? It's almost as big as a soccer field."

"BuShips may have gotten a little over-ambitious with rec facilities once we figured out how much space cutting the crew complement down to 1500 would leave. And they knew _Moiraine_ was going to be my flagship."

"I'm not making the connection."

"They don't play Rivendellian football on Manticore, Admiral." His chief of staff reminded him. "But the Admiral could have played professionally if he hadn't joined the Navy. It's mostly derived from American football, with some rule and equipment changes for safety and reduced ambiguity. In the old National Football League back on earth, a strict interpretation of the rules would have meant holding could be called on every play. And they didn't have microsensors inside the ball, so spotting it was a bit tricky."

The Manticorans still looked confused. "The last dispatch boat from home included HDs of some of the playoff games. Maybe I can show you one later."


	6. Chapter 5

5

Princess Harriet II Sanderson wore a Fleet Admiral's uniform as she reviewed the newest units of her navy. Technically, she wore more stars than she had earned; her father had died while she was a Vice Admiral. In fact, the Princedom of Sanderson Navy wasn't really big enough to have a Fleet Admiral; its highest-ranking officer was simply a full admiral. But if the ruling monarch was going to appear in uniform, she had to outrank everyone, which was why the PSN even had Fleet Admiral insignia. And it was a forgone conclusion that, no matter how impractical it might be, if and when she committed her new fleet to action, she was going with it and exercising direct, personal command.

In a lot of ways that was probably a good thing despite the risks for a sitting head of state. When she was a serving officer, she had climbed the ranks quickly in large part due to who her father was, but there wasn't much doubt she was the best fleet-level tactician in the PSN. And she was charismatic, highly intelligent, and very attractive (even if as a 2nd-generation prolong recipient in her seventies she looked closer to a pre-prolong forty than twenty); even the handful of very senior officers who really should have commanded her fleet in action liked and respected her. Albrecht Detweiller would likely have credited much of her native ability to the century or so her family had availed itself of Mesa's 'improvements', but that was long in the past, and if prior ruling Princes and Princesses had been as capable, they had little to show for it. Except, perhaps, the Princedom's independence, lack of the crushing poverty so common in the Verge, and the small empire Sanderson had begun acquiring in Harriet's father's reign.

Her abilities as a strategist were largely untested; historically, the Princedom's Navy had been effectively used as mercenaries when OFS thought they needed more punch than someone like Monica could provide, but had been unwilling to get Frontier Fleet – or, especially, Battle Fleet – to provide it. When OFS called in the PSN, it was when someone other than Manpower had a very serious problem that needed to be dealt with. Along the way, they had performed the odd single-system smash-and-grab as the Princedom slowly built a vest-pocket empire.

But what she was proposing now was far more ambitious than any Prince or Princess of Sanderson had ever contemplated. She intended to roll up all of the OFS protectorates in her sector, and push her borders right to the frontiers of the full members of the League… like the Rivendell Republic.

She was well aware that while her Princedom might be a big fish compared to the local independent systems and OFS protectorates, she had nothing like the technical resources of most League member systems. But Haven hadn't had anything like Manticore's technical resources, and they had fought each other to a standstill twice. And while the base tech level in Haven was nowhere near Manticore's, they still had deployed a Navy with tech far better than the SLN. And that was all she needed to do to keep Battle Fleet from poking its head in more than once, she was sure. Hand the SLN one defeat, and they'd be too busy elsewhere to try and hold on to systems that were never officially members of the League anyway.

Based on what her observers had seen from Manticore and Haven, she didn't think what her engineers had been able to come up with would stand a chance against either of them in anything resembling an even engagement. If they had the Manticorans' new targeting system, she wasn't even confident of her chances in a seriously _uneven_ engagement. But against anything OFS could get out here, or anything the locals could build on their own… she had SD(P)s and they did not. That should prove enough to be decisive.

So the real joker in the deck was the Rivendell Navy; she didn't plan on moving against the elves any time soon, but rumor had it their new _Aes Sedai_ class was a podlayer, and she knew very well where her technical capabilities stood relative to Rivendell's. Without a fundamental conceptual edge – like having podlayers when they did not, their DN would beat her SD nine times out of ten. That would only be a problem if they chose to get involved, though, and history said they would not. They had not intervened while she, at her father's direction, had been picking off local independents. And she knew the elves well enough to know they would shed no tears for OFS' losses.

"Very impressive, Admiral." She told the man next to her. And she really and truly meant it; there were far too many systems in human-occupied space to know how many governments had seen what Manticore and Haven were doing and decided they needed a new fleet. And of those who had made that determination, many of them lacked the resources to begin right away or even at all. So while the ships in front of her were in a lot of ways crude compared anything Manticore, or even Haven would build, they were true podlayers. And while the dual-drive missiles their pods carried were bigger than Haven's first-generation triple-drive missile and probably had less powerful warheads, building any true multi-drive missile was a significant technical achievement that her people had managed and as near as she could tell, the Mesans had not.


	7. Chapter 6

6

"Did you ever give Caitlin Michaels a reason to dislike you, Luis?" Edie Habib asked her commander.

"Not that I can think of." Rozsak said. "Why do you ask?"

"Because about ninety-five percent of the transfer requests we've put in for people from the Rivendell Sector have been denied straight out - even for low-level enlisted."

"That can't be coincidence."

"True, but I can't think what she'd be up to. I can't think of anything that makes sense for anyone with a nearly hereditary fleet command, at any rate."

"I've got an idea, though it might be a little crazy. Elves have always been good at thinking long-term."

"You don't seriously think that?"

"I think you'll find everyone's transfer requests from her sector have hit a black hole lately. Probably from around the time Rampajet decided to invade Manticore."

Habib punched some numbers into her workstation. There were millions of personnel in the huge SLN, but basic personnel information on all of them and recent change requests was still less than a terabyte of data. And so a local Frontier Fleet detachment would keep a copy of it at headquarters, routinely updated every time an official courier dropped into Smoking Frog. As Luis Rozsak's chief of staff, Habib was something of a wizard in getting the information she wanted out of that dataset. For the most part, she used that skill to find highly qualified people with the right mindset to recruit for Rozsak and Barregos' Sepoy Option. But she could use those skills for other purposes.

"No, you're right. As of about six months ago, Admiral Michaels' office has been refusing over 90% of transfer requests from her command… and other than a rush of them scattered over the first two months of that period, they've made no requests to transfer anyone out of their command area. Also, she's provided a rather encyclopedic list of reasons why none of the ships in her command will be available for Kingsford's latest brainstorm. It's amazing how much of her command is 'in urgent need of refit' or 'performing critical anti-piracy duties' or 'on extended detached duty' or is otherwise unavailable. I don't think this is quite Michaels' own version of Sepoy, though."

"Why do you say that?" Lt. Luis Rozsak had served under Captain Caitlin Michaels for a time, and he thought she was way too much of a by-the-book type to do something like that on her own, but Habib hadn't had his experience there.

"Almost all of her sailors are from Rivendell itself or the other four worlds that were part of the Rivendell Republic before it was incorporated into the League. And the Rivendell Navy recruits heavily from her detachment. If I were to guess… I think Rivendell had some sort of contingency plan for the collapse of the league for a while now… and they just activated it."

"That could be. I can't see how it impacts us, other than keeping us from raiding the elves for personnel. Can your wizardry show me any other projects that might be troublesome?"

"Probably not without knowing where to start, but you never know." She tapped a few keys.

"Well, that's no surprise. The computer thinks 34th Fleet is a possibility." Habib continued. "90% of its personnel are from Old Earth or systems all our models say will stay allied with Sol no matter what happens. And its officers largely score well above average in Battle Fleet's objective evaluations, but are usually too old for their rank, even when they have the family ties to do better."

It was hard not to automatically dismiss it. SLN gossip said that 34th Fleet was Admrial Indira Thenuwara's little sinecure, the absolute minimum the Thenuwara family felt was due to an officer of her seniority, radical notions or no, and Battle Fleet's dumping ground for troublemakers. But then he remembered what kind of attitudes were likely to get one branded as a troublemaker in Battle Fleet. But Rozsak didn't see how 34th Fleet could be a problem out in Maya.

[break]

"What is the meaning of this?" Captain Madison Keeley asked, flinging her tablet down on the desk of her immediate superior. She was Admiral Michaels' chief of staff, or at least had been. But now…

"It looks like a promotion to me. And a transfer back to the core. I could have thought you'd be pleased." Admiral Michaels lied, closing the door of her cabin. The admiral had hoped Keeley would accept the promotion and leave without asking questions. She hadn't expected it, but she had hoped.

"Ten years, and you shuffle me back to earth to get a star pinned on my uniform? When the League seems to be at war? And with someone that seems to have much better ships than we do?" The captain said. "I'm not the only one in the detachment that got an odd transfer order in the last few weeks. None of us were Rivendellians."

"Are you sure you want an explanation, Maddy? You might not like it."

"I'm not going back to Earth without knowing why the best CO I've ever had is trying to get rid of me, promotion or no."

"If I answer, I'm afraid you're not leaving Rivendell whether you like what you hear or not. So I'll ask a second time if you're sure."

"No Rivendellian got an unusual transfer order. But every non-elf in a senior position seems to have, unless he or she had something tying them to Rivendell. Family – spouses in most cases, business, or something. You're planning a mutiny."

"We're planning to keep Rivendell safe when the League falls apart. We have been for almost a century now. And now it looks like time to use those plans. So yes, when the balloon goes up, this detachment is going to transfer its service from the Solarian League to the Rivendell Republic. And knowing that, do you want to continue as my chief of staff – with that promotion to Commodore still intact – or spend the next few months in a quite comfortable place where you're simply not allowed to leave? It won't be for a long time; not long after the secession referendum passes we'll be going public."

"You don't deal in small change, do you Admiral?" Keeley said. "But for what it's worth, you've got me."

A few conversations like that had gone the other way, of course. There were a few dozen SLN officers sequestered at a very comfortable island resort, and even a few hundred enlisted. There weren't many places with a 'tropical' climate on Rivendell, any more than there were many great ski sites, but there were a few. For all the comforts provided to its inhabitants, they were not allowed to leave.


	8. Chapter 7

7

The sensor arrays placed along the outer system in Nethril were rather better than most Verge worlds maintained. It was true that they were tiny, and virtually blind compared to the arrays placed around Manticore, Haven, or Old Earth, but those systems were not protectorates of the Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security.

"Holy shit!" Lt. Ianto Thomas of Nethril Perimeter Security shouted from his station.

His superior looked back, and surprisingly calmly asked "What do you have?"

"It's got to be a malfunction." Thomas said, trying to accept his rationalization.

"I'm seeing it too, Ianto." The older man said. "And they don't seem to be broadcasting anything identifying who they are. I've got to think it's the Manties, but how the heck did they get way out here?"

The senior officer changed who he was speaking to and continued. "On chip for the homeworld. We have detected a very large hyper footprint, at least twenty-five point sources, at least 8 in the super dreadnaught range, another 6 BCs, another 8 or so cruisers and destroyers, and what looks like 5 auxiliaries in the BB tonnage range. All of which are heading in-system faster than emergency max accel for a _Scientist_-class SD. They are not broadcasting any identification at this time, but must be presumed to be Manticoran."

[break]

"Unknown task force, be advised that that you are entering the territory of a protectorate of the Solarian League, and as such any attacks on Nethril will be considered as acts of war against the League. Accordingly, we strongly advise you to withdraw." The senior OFS representative said.

"This is Princess Harriet II of the Princedom of Sanderson, and I'd encourage you not to think of my fleet as an invading force, but one that offers you an opportunity." And she was smiling when she said that.

"What kind of opportunity?" He said.

"We thought we would help you consolidate the SLN's forces for operations against Manticore by taking over the security of the protectorates in our sphere."

"And what do you intend to do if I reject this _opportunity_?"

"Well, then I'm afraid there would be an irreparable breakdown in relations between the Princedom and the League, and I'm sorry to say there might be a shooting incident."

"You can't hope to get away with this."

"I'm fairly certain the SLN will not commit enough force to this sector to defeat the Princedom's navy. They have far too many other, more serious problems. What I'm doing is nothing compared to problems closer to home."

Whether that was true or not, Princess Sanderson had a squadron of the wall and he had nothing heavier than a light cruiser in-system. He thought the geometry was right to get a dispatch boat out, but there was no way he could fight.


	9. Chapter 8

8

_There was no going back. There was not for quite some time._ Rivendell's senior delegate to the League Assembly thought, with the formal note in his hand. As far as he knew, the Rivendell-Spindle Bridge was still unknown to the League; there was more than enough traffic from Sol to Beowulf to hide the odd diplomatic pouch from home. He wouldn't be the first Assembly delegate to present the same kind of note he was about to deliver; Beowulf's had done so a good six weeks ago. He would, though, be presenting four petitions in addition to his homeworld.

"I'm sure you can guess why I'm here." He told the League's Foreign Minister.

"I would not have thought another domino would fall so quickly."

"It has. Rivendell, Rohan, Gondor, Kalara, and Osaka are formally notifying you as of this moment that they have voted to secede from the League. Immediately afterward, they announced the restoration of the old Rivendell Republic as a five-system polity and have named me ambassador to the League going forward. Further details are on the chip."

[break]

"They what!?" Innoketty said.

"Not only did they secede, they announced that the Rivendell Sector's Frontier Fleet detachment would be formally incorporated into the Rivendell Navy, and Admiral Caitlin Michaels would become their new Chief of Naval Operations." Kingsford said.

"And what do you intend to do about it? We can't let people just walk off with a sector fleet detachment."

"I need a fleet for Beowulf, another one for a punitive expedition against Sanderson, God only knows how many brush fires along the verge, and I need something to replace Frontier Fleet's BCs pulled from their regular duties for commerce raiding and all I've got are Battle Fleet's SDs – those that haven't been shot to pieces or captured by the Manties, at any rate. Meanwhile, the Princedom of Sanderson has at least two squadrons of SDs, the Rivendell Navy has over forty wallers of its own. And our recent experiences with Manticore are showing that a lot of the radical ideas General Dynamics of Rivendell proposed for new SLN construction – which were promptly ignored by the SLN, but were built into the Rivendell Navy's units – seem to have also been adopted by Manticore. There doesn't seem to be much question that their _Assassin_-class DNs are tougher than any SD our Navy has – and they're retiring the _Assassins_ as obsolete in favor of a design we don't know a damn thing about except rumors that they scrapped the original design in the aftermath of Manticore's 'Operation Buttercup'."

"You told us a few weeks ago that Battle Fleet was useless against Manticore until we build new ships. Are you saying that we should feel the same way about a shell SDF like _Rivendell_? Or the handful of wallers of a verge system with delusions of grandeur like the Princedom of Sanderson?"

"I don't know. I do know that Princess Harriet has a wall of battle that was built after everyone but our intelligence departments had a basic idea of what Manticore was doing even if they had no idea how they were doing it. And I've read the reports from OFS on missions where they used the Princedom's Navy for the heavy of the piece and Harriet II Sanderson was the commanding admiral… they had a high regard for her competence, and that of her navy as a whole. If she's raiding protectorates, she believes we won't be able to spare enough force to stop her."

[break]

Admiral Indira Thenuwara did not expect to be directly screened by Admiral Kingsford even when he was Battle Fleet's CEO rather than the ranking uniformed officer in the SLN. If her family had been less well-connected in Battle Fleet, her career might well have stalled out long before she reached flag rank. In the vast majority of the cases in Battle Fleet where that was true, the officer in question had far better family connections than competence. In Thenuwara's case, though, it was rather the opposite. She wrote scathing reports about 'unrealistic training scenarios' and completely ignored the standard protocol when exercising her own task force (or squadron, or ship), made a habit of exercising with and against self-defense forces when her fleet was deployed – which she managed to achieve quite a bit, she was friendly with Frontier Fleet officers, and all in all made waves. It wasn't the best way to achieve advancement in the SLN, and if her family had not been looking out for her, would certainly have stalled her at a lower rank than full admiral.

"I've got a job for you." He'd said.

"If you want me to take a fleet anywhere we're likely to face Manticoran missiles or anything like them, you'll have my resignation. I won't be a party to suicidal charges."

"I can't guarantee anything. Both the Rivendell Navy and Princedom of Sanderson Navy have begun deploying new ships of the wall. Our best intelligence suggests the RN's latest missiles are simply extended-range single-drive missiles because they're too small to be anything else and still hold a capital laser head, and that there's no way anyone could build anything like Manticore's missiles with a tech base as backward as the Princedom's. But we've been wrong before. Quite spectacularly, recently."

[break]

Less than a week later, she was already regretting agreeing to take this command. Her chief of staff asked her why.

"Caitlin Michaels had an excellent reputation in Frontier Fleet as both a tactician and an administrator. And she had a reputation as a careful, cautious operator. She's now the uniformed commander of the Rivendell Navy. Wes Marrone rose to the rank of Commander in Frontier Fleet, and served with distinction as a light cruiser's commanding officer before retiring to join the Rivendell Navy. Harriet II Sanderson was a flag officer in the Princedom's navy for a long time before inheriting the throne and if she had a reputation as something of a gambler, she also had one for tactical brilliance. None of them are fools, Yao." She said.

"And this means?" He asked.

"Neither Rivendell nor Sanderson would ever have done this if they thought they could not get away with it. Our official intelligence estimates say that they could not possibly have anything like those ridiculous Manticoran missiles, but I have to expect that they do, or something else equally disruptive."

"So what do you plan to do about it?"

"Kingsford won't like it."

[break]

"You want what?" He said.

"A hundred of the wall, at least two hundred BCs for screens, full missile load outs of the same missiles Filareta had at Manticore, and two ammo ships worth of the missile pods he had." She said again.

"And where do you expect me to get that from? Your nominal command is a task force of four squadrons of the wall and standard screen."

"I believe that's the force level required to defeat the Rivendell Navy and the Princedom of Sanderson Navy and seize the high orbitals of both worlds. The Rivendell Navy officially has 42 dreadnaughts in service, and officially is retiring their _Assassin_ class in favor of their _Aes Sedai_ class on a one for one basis over the next five years. The _Assassin_ class is nearly as big as a _Scientist_ or _Vega_ SD and even though the elves are mothballing them it's a much more modern design than anything we have. And all we know about the _Aes Sedai_ class is that they scrapped their original design just before they were to enter construction, spent four years working on a new design, and then started construction. The timing strongly suggests they saw something in the late stages of the first Manticore-Haven war – which was where the first reports of those 'impossible' Manticoran missiles appeared if you recall.

"And as for the Princedom – the first we heard they had _any_ wall of battle was when we got reports back from Nethril. We know almost nothing about their capabilities, as the local forces were not willing to engage ships of the wall with a pair of cruisers, but their SDs are definitely bigger than anything we have, and definitely have better acceleration than anything that size would have if we built it. It was nothing close to what we've seen out of Manticore, but the locals' first impression had been that it had to be Manties. So I must be prepared to defeat at least fifty of the wall, all of which are superior to everything I have, and at least some of which are likely to have some capabilities we have only seen from Manticore to date. I must have superior numbers and a larger than standard screen to have any chance of success. I will need to draw the screen from Frontier Fleet, and it will impact your raiding operations, but I do not see a choice here."

"I'll see what I can do. If I cannot get you most of what you want I will ask the ministers to reduce the scope of your mission. Rivendell and its neighbors arguably have the legal right to secede from the League, and I expect the Rivendellians have concocted a way to legally rationalize stealing a fleet and its crew. But the Princedom committed an act of war on a protectorate of the Solarian League; we cannot possibly let that stand."

"Understood."


	10. Chapter 9

9

"Some of our engineers aren't going to like this." Admiral Hemphill told the gathered Alliance representatives. "We've sent them off to Bolthole, and a few weeks later we're going to ship half of them on to Rivendell."

"Ours aren't going to feel much better." Thomas Theisman said. "But if Rivendell's yards can't put out anywhere near the volume ours can, they're still the closest thing to what you had at Hephaestus and Vulcan that we've got."

"I'd like to think our people will do a lot to make up for the loss of Manticoran personnel." Secretary Blanchet said. "You're trusting us a lot with this."

But retooling Rivendell's shipyards to produce the latest Manticoran missiles and drones and superdreadoughts would be a lot easier than anywhere else in the Alliance, even Beowulf. The Beowulfers had much of the technical know-how, but they were not in the middle of producing a run of podlaying wallers, and had elected to avoid deploying Manticoran or Manticoran-inspired advances lest they draw attention. Rivendell had felt it had no choice but to deploy radical new technology, and so had tried to divert attention from it, but the fact was Rivendell had a lot of near-equivalents of Manticore's latest in volume production before the first Manticoran advisor would arrive.

[break]

"We've received some disturbing, if unconfirmed reports, Princess." The Princedom of Sanderson's Royal Intelligence Officer told his sovereign.

"You thought they were urgent enough to come out here personally." She replied.

"Unquestionably." He said. When he outlined what his people had learned of Rivendell's actions, and of the League's response to both the Princedom's actions and Rivendell's, she understood his concern.

"I don't intend to concede the game." She said.

[break]

"You seem more disturbed by this news than we are." Hamish Alexander told Admiral Marrone.

"How much do you have on Indira Thenuwara?" He asked.

"Almost nothing. She hasn't crossed paths with us, which is hardly unusual for a Battle Fleet officer, particularly one from a Fleet family as old and well-connected as the Thenuwara clan."

"What did you think when your intelligence services learned Esther McQueen had been named Secretary of War?"

"Opinion was divided as to how much freedom of action she would have, but putting someone as skilled as she was in command of Haven's Navy could hardly be good for us."

"I don't think Admiral Thenuwara has ambitions of her own along the lines McQueen was rumored to, but I do think she's at least as dangerous. It might be time for my squadron to head home."

[break]

"Is there anyone who thinks we should follow standard doctrine for this operation and sail the whole fleet to Sanderson?" Indira asked. Her tone was light, but the question was serious, and a matter of regulation. Admiral Thenuwara tried to follow Battle Fleet regulations when practical. Even if she bent them into a pretzel at times.

Negative answers came from her squadron commanders and staff.

"It would probably work." Commodore Yao said, answering last. "The Princedom almost certainly doesn't know about the Cataphracts, and I doubt they have thirty of the wall, let alone fifty. But I agree; even if we accepted Battle Fleet intelligence's assessment of what they're likely to have, we need more information."

"And I can't believe Harriet II Sanderson would make a move like this without something like the Manticoran missiles or something else she believes will let her win at least one battle with Battle Fleet. She may not think we can fight hard to keep the Protectorates, but she has to anticipate at least an attempt."

"And the Republic?"

"I can't see Caitlin Michaels breaking her fleet into penny packets we can defeat in detail." Admiral Jared Richt, who commanded the Frontier Fleet forces attached to Thenuwara's task force, said. "And we have to treat the public specs of the _Assassin_ class as a minimum baseline for the capabilities of their ships of the wall."

Yao and the rest of Thenuwara's staff did not argue. Which wasn't surprising; his Admiral had all of Frontier Fleet to pick a commander from for this operation, so she was certainly able to find one with what she considered to be the proper attitude.

Forty years ago, the Republic had begun building a class of dreadnoughts that were only smaller than the SLN's _Scientist_ and _Vega_ class SDs by the smallest of margins and included all sorts of bells and whistles and design elements 'to adapt to the forthcoming laser head era' that the SLN had rejected out of hand. And built them tubes noticeably larger than standard SLN capital missiles. General Dynamics of Rivendell may have been a smaller defense contractor for the SLN prior to Republic's secession, but they were a first-tier one; they were quite capable of producing every missile in the SLN's standard inventory, so there was no reason to suspect the _Assassins_ could fire _bigger_ missiles unless they also fired _better_ ones. Despite that, the Rivendell Navy considered the design obsolete, which suggested that instead of being something akin to the marginal improvement over her _Vegas_ that Thenuwara and her staff believed the _Assassin_ to be, the _Aes Sedai_ class was another matter entirely.

And what Thenuwara had was six battle squadrons and screen – not the twelve she had asked for, but two beyond the four she normally commanded as 34th Fleet. Her request for an oversized screen had been granted to some extent, which was why a full Admiral from Frontier Fleet was assigned to her command. And she did have full loads of the new missiles, and two ammunition ships loaded with the new pods. If her estimates were correct, her force could take the Princedom's navy, but not the elves.

"I intend to sail the fleet to an uninhabited system in the target sector, then dispatch some of Admiral Richt's force to scout the Princedom and its conquests, while I take a squadron and screen and pay a courtesy call on Rivendell."

[break]

There were, in fact, four practical routes to the Rivendell Sector from Sol. The oldest, nearly directly through hyperspace, was seldom used anymore, as six weeks of transit time was about as long as you could travel from Earth and stay within full members of the League. The newest, and fastest, route was unavailable to Thenuwara's fleet even if she had been aware of it; a few days to Beowulf, through the Manticoran wormhole Junction to Manticore and on to Lynx, a week to the Spindle terminus system, through the wormhole to the Rivendell terminus system, and then another day to Rivendell itself; somewhat more complicated, but a third of the time. And the fourth path was somewhat more roundabout than the one through Manticore, nearly a week longer, and even more secret. In fact, it was the main reason the Alignment had thought to involve itself in this sector to begin with, for a key connection on that path was through the Felix wormhole junction.

But the route most commonly traveled involved a single wormhole transit that was quite a ways from any connection to the main wormhole network that spread out from Manticore, but did cut almost two weeks off the trip. Thenuwara and her staff had agreed that the New Capetown – New Beijing Bridge ought to be safe, and certainly was unlikely to be held by anything that could resist her fleet.


	11. Chapter 10

10

Admiral Michaels had done some back off the envelope math on the minimum time it would take for an SLN fleet to pay her a visit. She assumed Thenuwara would move faster than anyone would believe possible from Battle Fleet, but would still have to deal with the SLN's bureaucracy and logistics support. And she assumed Manticore had not pushed their 'Case Lacoon' to the New Capetown – New Beijing Bridge yet, mostly because she had access to a high-level outline of that plan courtesy of the first courier boat the Secretary of State had sent back from Manticore. She'd declined to order Marrone back immediately. That might be a mistake; he had far more experience commanding a fleet of the wall than she, much like he had none of her high-level administrative experience. That was why he had the detached field command – that, and he could have been detached before Rivendell left the League. But the Manticorans, Graysons, Beowulfers, Andermani, and even Havenites all knew each other in this alliance; Rivendell was a new player from an unexpected part of the galaxy. They needed the relationships that could only be built with a large presence out at Manticore. And beyond that, they needed the reminder that Rivendell's hardware was real, not some simulated worst-case of what someone with basically Solarian tech could do.

Still, she wished her calculations said she had another six months. Marrone would be back, and the third flight of _Aes Sedai_ combined with Marorne's six from the first flight would give her 30 DN(P)s instead of the dozen, all which had been just out of the yard when Marrone departed, that she had. Or better yet the eighteen months that would give her all 42. As long as she were dreaming, she might wish for the SD(P)s that were even now being laid down, or a powerful Alliance fleet to back up her own.

Despite how much the initial reports said their new allies were willing to trust them with, they didn't think Rivendell needed to be urgently rushed additional defenses. Perhaps they were correct. She had what was clearly the most modern wall of battle in her region of space, and only a handful of systems had more effective fixed defenses than the system defense pod network they had in place. And she had dispatched a fairly significant mobile component to the other four worlds of the Republic and to the terminus system of the new wormhole bridge. In part, that was because she might need it; if Harriet II Sanderson decided the Republic was worth raiding with SD(P)s and those SD(P)s had even the most crude of multi-drive missiles, then the fixed defenses might not be enough. And the bridge to Spindle had no fixed defenses; they were being built now as plans set up to defend five systems were hastily reworked for six. Then there was the other reason for dispersing some of her fleet – no one back on old earth should be aware that she was not decommissioning one _Assassin_ for each _Aes Sedai_, nor should they have the slightest notion that her handful of _Windfinders_ existed at all.

With a Battle Fleet Admiral other than Indira Thenuwara, Caitlin could likely have simply ensured there were no more than 42 warships roughly the size of a waller in the system, and he would have been content to believe that was all she had. Thenuwara, on the other hand, would know what forces she was supposed to have and what responsibilities she was supposed to have; if told the Rivendell Navy had elected to consolidate its entire wall in the capital, she would see through that lie immediately.

"CIC reports the contact as eight Vega-class SDs and screen." Michael's flag lieutenant relayed to her. "They have informed the Council that they're simply playing a courtesy call on the Republic … but they fired off a bunch of recon drones."

"They'll show exactly what we want them to see, lieutenant." Michaels told him. The man was old for his rank by the standards of most navies, even the SLN, but the old Rivendell Navy drew its junior officers from ex-SLN enlisted. It was an unusual arrangement, but given that it drew all of its officers from former SLN personnel, there wasn't much choice. The Navy could hardly bring in people at less than their SLN rank, and every navy needed ensigns and junior lieutenants. The practice shouldn't be needed in large scale now that the former SLN training center on Rivendell was producing officers for her navy directly, but the large number of mustangs had been useful in some ways. And she had made a concerted effort to integrate Rivendell Navy personnel with the staff she'd brought over from the SLN.

[break]

"I understand you have a sector detachment's worth of stolen ships and mutinied personnel, Admiral Michaels. Yourself most senior among them."

"I'm afraid the SLN did not relay all the information it had on our status to you, Admiral Thenuwara." She said. "All of the former SLN personnel you speak of resigned from the SLN effective the day the secession vote passed. Though we do have a handful of people who I hope can beg a ride home from your fleet; the vast majority of the personnel in my fleet were Rivendell citizens by birth, marriage, or naturalization already and those who chose to serve in the Rivendell Navy without prior Rivendell citizenship have, of course, been granted fast-track naturalization. But the new arrangements have left some people stranded who were previously unable to return the SLN.

"As for the ships… if you examine the legal records of the acquisition of the ships for this sector's former Frontier Fleet detachment, you will find that the vast majority of them were in fact leased from the Rivendell Navy, and that those leases had a clause which terminated those leases if Rivendell should ever secede from the League. As for the few that are not… we are prepared to purchase them from League at their new-purchase price."

"Somehow I don't think they're prepared to accept that offer back in Old Chicago at this time. Having said that, I'm also here to formally request any intelligence your government is willing to share regarding Sanderson's recent conquests."

"I'm afraid it took us by as much surprised as everyone else. We were aware they were expanding and upgrading their forces, but the degree that they have shown is troubling."

"And no one in the sector except Rivendell and the League will even try to fight against ships of the wall."

"Frontier Fleet officers are rarely fools, and OFS officials have a finely honed self-preservation instinct, yes."


	12. Chapter 11

11

"So what have we learned about our renegade princess?" Thenuwara asked at her first conference after returning the fleet rendezvous point.

"Nothing good. Sanderson has more heavy metal than we thought – at least five squadrons. It appears the Princess has been skipping between the three she's using for offensive operations by dispatch boat. We can give you a good external scan and signal analysis of every class they have, but we don't know their combat capabilities yet.

"The main points on their wall are simple. They've displayed acceleration that exceeds our emergency maximum, but falls well short of what we've seen from Manticore, in an 8.2 MT ship of the wall. Their wallers have the oversized rear hatches that seem characteristic of first-line wallers from Manticore and Haven – larger than theirs and and five instead of six – which we believe are for deploying missile pods. They seem to have no broadside missile armament at all, which further supports that hypothesis. Meanwhile the chase tubes clearly are designed for far larger missiles than our standard capital missiles, or even the Cataphract-Cs Technodyne supplied us.

"They also have a class of roughly 2 MT with only three presumed pod-launching bays but the same format. At a guess, it's meant to fill a battle cruiser role despite the size. It could be just for show, but we've seen Manticore's giant BCs and they could probably take one of our wallers. Everything smaller than that seems to be consistent with the Princedom used in its operations on behalf of OFS." Admiral Richt summarized.

"And the elves?"

"They showed us 18 of the wall in their capital system, and if they kept a squadron each in every other member system and are replacing their Assassins with Aes Sedai one for one like they claim, that accounts for everything." Commodore Yao said.

"But?"

"They have a lot of construction going on. And it's obvious they believe the galaxy is becoming a much rougher place. I find it hard to believe they would throw away DNs that could handle just about anyone else's SD – including ours. Add in that that the _Aes Sedai_ class ships we saw are clearly built along a pod-laying pattern even if their bays are positioned a bit differently than Manticore's, the rumors that Manticore has been using far more automation than we do, the certainty that the elves copied everything coming out of the Haven Sector that they could reverse engineer, and that General Dynamics of Rivendell has very good engineers… it's a pretty sure thing we're missing something. I'm just not sure what. Most of Battle Fleet wouldn't have looked beyond the murals painted on their ships; I can't think Michaels was happy to see us."

"I can see only one way to get the information we need on the combat abilities of Sanderson's wall." Thenuwara said. "I have to think they would engage an SLN force that only outnumbered them by two to one or so."

"I concur, but I'd suggest you not lead that force yourself."

"Why not? I need to prove my reputation is worth something outside a simulator." She knew the answer, though.

"We need to force an engagement against an enemy that can out-accelerate us and – anywhere but their home system – is not defending anything critical. That's a job for a Vice-Admiral. An expendable one, in fact." Yao said.

"We don't have any expendable admirals."

"Not even Brock?" Yao said, referring to the senior of the two Battle Fleet squadron commanders attached to her fleet for this operation, but not part of her regular command.

"Adrienne Brock was the most capable Battle Fleet squadron commander outside our fleet within a hundred light-years of Sol when Kingsford handed me this operation. I don't intend to use her as a sacrificial lamb just because she doesn't like me. It wouldn't do wonders for Kingsford's willingness to hand me reinforcements in the future. I'll think of something."

[break]

When the conference room had nearly emptied, Yao asked his CO a question. "If you think highly of Brock, why didn't you ever try and bring her into the fleet properly?"

"In a lot of ways I would have liked to. But she's from Heimdall." Thenuwara said.

"And you're not at all certain they'll stay in the League – or in a multisystem polity that includes Sol, for that matter – when things fall apart." He said. In almost any other SLN fleet, even hinting that the fleet could end up in service to Sol but not the Solarian League would have been unthinkable.

"In a lot of ways I hate doing things like this. I'd like to be able to have the best and brightest from the whole SLN in my fleet. What I've got are the best of Battle Fleet from the deep core who are interested in using their brains to learn how to fight battles with laser heads and grasers not political maneuvering. And a few from outside the deep core that have been with us since they were junior officers and have personal loyalties to me or one of my senior people. I've been encouraging Jared Richt to do the same thing in Frontier Fleet for decades, but he has even more problems getting good people to stay in a core sector detachment; too many others are trying to get the same people, and they can offer better incentives."


	13. Chapter 12

12

"I'm still worried about that ship that hypered in and out yesterday." Vice-Admiral Carroll said. The Rivendell-Spindle wormhole bridge was not officially open for business. In fact, its location was not public. Its existence had slipped out to the public in Rivendell and the Star Empire, but there were more than a few systems close enough to the Republic's capital to be the terminus system rumor spoke of. Anyone who came into this system should be here on official business for Rivendell.

"Maybe someone local was feeling adventurous, saw seven wallers, and thought better of it?" His flag captain said. Terry Duncan had been with him for five years now.

"Maybe. But we don't have seven wallers. We have six and LAC carrier. All of which are brand new designs based on concepts no one outside the Haven Sector has used in combat."

"You could have asked to stay with one of old-style squadrons, you know."

"No, I think I like _Caddy_ and her sisters just fine. I'm just worrying."

[break]

Harriet II Sanderson preferred to make other people worry, but she knew this operation was a risk. She'd stripped the garrison forces on her latest conquests and raided her new Home Fleet to gather what ought to be a decisive force against six pod dreadnoughts and Rivendell's version of a LAC carrier. Her engineers hadn't advanced a carrier design; they had felt they could not design a LAC worth adding to her fleet mix. And she was willing to stipulate that a Rivendell DN(P) could easily be more than a match for one of her SD(P)s. But she had twenty of them to Carroll's six. And she needed to make sure Manticore could not send a fleet through this bridge if she had any chance of holding her new empire.

[break]

"I get… roughly twenty of the wall and screen. No match on the emissions patterns."

"Probably Sanderson's new toys." Carroll said. If they were podlayers, and had MDMs, then his fleet was in a lot of trouble. If only one of those was true, he could manage something. If neither was true, then he had the advantage. "Send a dispatch boat to the capital system all possible speed. And the other through the junction to Spindle and on to Manticore; if Sanderson gets the chance to mine the exit lane then Wesley's squadron could have trouble getting home. Relay the recon take on their way out."

No matter how unlikely they'd thought a serious attack on the terminus system was, Carroll's squadron had prepared for it. _Talaan din Gayln_'s LACs shot out from the carrier and moved into screening position among the fleet's battle cruisers. Dreamwalker drones deployed from the ships of the wall. Missile pods rolled out in waves from the six DN(P)s' pod bays.

"I'm afraid it does look like Harriet's sending SD(P)s at us." Duncan said. "Assuming they're running their compensators at 80% power or more, they could out-accelerate a _Vega_ pretty easily … but not us, even if we had another megaton or two." Rivendell had not cracked the secret to Manticore's radical new compensators, but they had pushed conventional ones farther than anyone else.

"We're going to have to see what they're made of, I think. Prepare a message for the enemy commander." He said to his communications officer.

"Incoming fleet, you are entering a system claimed by the Rivendell Republic. Any hostilities against my squadron will be regarded by my star nation as an act of war, and we demand that you withdraw immediately." Carroll doubted that they would listen, but he did intend to try. He suspected they had the firepower to call his bluff. But they would get hurt rather more than they would like.

The Rivendell Republic's DN(P)s carried the _Callandor_ missile – a fusion-powered, true dual-drive capital missile. The nearest equivalent any other navy possessed was a Manticoran Mark 23 with a drive stage removed. And the Rivendell Navy's war games had suggested that the maximum effective range for fire control from an _Aes Sedai_ class DN(P) with its Dreamwalker platforms deployed was rather beyond the entirely powered range of that missile. Given the disparity of raw numbers, there was little reason to conserve ammunition.

"Let's try to thin out their screen first. Pick a couple of the BC(P)s and target them. And keep going with that until we've thinned their screen enough to try for the big boys." Each of Carroll's six DN(P)s had five pod rails, and the Rivendell Navy's current-generation pods held twelve _Callandor_ missiles. Which meant one pattern of missiles from his squadron was three hundred sixty missiles. And Carroll's fleet fired three patterns of pods before it faced its first return fire.

[break]

"Do you think they're trying to bluff us, your highness?" An officer asked.

"Only with their words. They wouldn't have fired if they didn't think their fire control was good enough from that range. We're going to have to hope we can take it; _we_ don't have that much effective range. As soon as we are in range, begin firing." Her ships had been rolling pods for the entire approach.

It had taken three salvos for Steve Carroll's fleet to send nearly a thousand missiles at her fleet. On the other hand, she had twenty SD(P)s, not six. Her missiles were both far larger and less capable; each of her pods held ten capacitor-powered missiles rather than twelve fusion-powered missiles. And despite being fired from an SD, her ships still only had five rails. But that still meant Harriet II Sanderson's SDs alone matched Carroll's three salvos with one. And she had twenty BC(P)s as well, with three pod rails each and the same pods as their SD(P) counterparts adding another six hundred missiles.

The Princedom of Sanderson Navy's model 7 capital missile was a monument to 'good enough' engineering. Although it was technically a true dual drive missile, unlike Technodyne's Cataphract, its baffles were not completely effective in muting interference between the missiles two drives. And this was despite it being a very large missile. But when it was fired, something interesting happened. The missiles broke apart in the center and _stretched_, nearly doubling their length.

"What in the world are their missiles doing?" Carroll asked, looking at the readouts. And indeed, almost three percent of them veered wildly off course when their second drive stage activated. "That split maneuver has got to make them more vulnerable."

"Only marginally." Duncan said. Anything that could even bring its wedge into contact with an impeller drive missile was going to destroy it, after all. "But if you have a fairly limited baffle design, it's going to work better the more separated the drives are, right?"

[break]

Sanderson's fleet tried to rearrange its defenses to protect the BC(P)s when it became clear what Carroll was targeting. It was already too late for four of them, already rendered combat incapable. Meanwhile the tightly integrated defenses of the Rivendell Navy's LACs, BCs, and DN(P)s had thus far lost nothing heavier than LACs that had absorbed missiles intended for the DN(P)s. All had suffered damage, but all were still fighting.

"Stop closing at just outside standard single-drive missile range if you can." The princess ordered.

[break]

Steve Carroll had proven the Rivendell Navy's third-best student of pod-based tactics in the simulators, behind Wes Marrone and Caitlin Michaels (the latter being a bit of surprise, as she had never commanded a wall of battle before her command shifted from a Frontier Fleet detachment to all of Rivendell's navy). That was why he'd drawn the assignment of defending the wormhole bridge.

But he had only held command of a squadron of DN(P)s for a few months, and his only combat experience prior to the battle he was currently fighting had been swatting pirates while in command of a Frontier Fleet destroyer thirty years ago. His navy had not spent nearly a decade fighting battles with towed pods before deploying pod layers. So he had not thought to give his BCs missile pods to use for the opening salvos, at least not in time to do anything.

Now, however, the Princedom's Navy had entered into range of a _Warder_-class BC's internal tubes. The RMN's Mark 14 and Mark 36 extended-range missiles had been designed for heavy cruisers and light cruisers or destroyers, respectively. The Rivendell Navy's _Heron-mark_ missile was never intended to be used in anything smaller (or larger) than the 1.2 MT all-new _Warder_-class BC. And so it was longest-ranged single-drive ship-fired missile ever deployed by any navy. And Harriet II Sanderson's navy had no idea it existed until Carroll's BCs added their own offensive fire to the pod-launched missiles from the DNs. Nor were they aware the _Warder_ class BC had off-bore firing capability, so instead of the 20 missiles of one broadside, they each fired forty, actually exceeding the missile density from a single pattern from the Princedom's BC(P)s. And with their firepower added, the Princedom's screen started to collapse.

[break]

"Change targeting priority to their LACs." The princess ordered. She'd already lost 8 BC(P)s, while the elves had lost nothing heavier than a LAC killed by stray missiles. That integrated defense was too tough to force through. It would be nice if the LACs would close to energy range of her SDs, but they seemed to lack the oversized main energy mount of the Manticoran 'super-LAC's she'd heard about and so had no intention of doing that.

It wasn't an unexpected strategy, but it was one that worked. As long as nothing as LACs weren't being targeted directly, their small size and high maneuverability made them far more survivable in an MDM fleet battle than anything short of a new-style BC. They were probably more survivable than Sanderson's BC(P)s, in fact. But they couldn't survive hits from all-up capital missiles, and even if evasive tactics, counter-missiles, point defense lasers, and in the case of Sanderson's mod 7's, outright missile failures, allowed a LAC to avoid ninety percent of the missiles fired at them, that still left ten percent. And the surviving ships of Harriet II Sanderson's fleet fired over a dozen missiles at each LAC in the first retargeted salvo.

12 LACs survived because the five BCs responsible for firing at them were destroyed before their missiles made their final attack run. Another thirteen, by some combination of luck and extraordinary skill, survived despite being targeted by an intact platform. But the remaining seventy five did not.

[break]

In dying, though, they had bought critical time. Not for Carroll's fleet to survive. But for its methodical assault on Harriet II Sanderson's screen to complete, and the remaining seven of her BC(P)s fell to the Rivendell Navy's missiles.

"It's time to see what the big boys are made of." Carroll said. They would not have much time. Without most of the LACs defensive fire, he was probably facing more missiles than they could stop effectively. Eventually, that proved decisive.


	14. Chapter 13

13

Wes Marrone punched the wall of his cabin. Steve Carroll and his fleet had been lost over a week ago when the news reached Manticore.

"I should have gone back home on my own authority as soon as we heard about Thenuwara."

"It wasn't the SLN that destroyed Vice Admiral Carroll's squadron." Secretary Blanchet reminded him.

And Admiral Michaels would have ordered him elsewhere. She wouldn't have been happy leaving the defenses of Kalara and Osaka as light as she had, but she had been covering seven systems with forces intended to defend six and with a full squadron of the wall and screen detached.

"I've made a formal request for aid under the terms of our draft agreement. I believe our new allies will be receptive." She continued.

"But it's going to take time. Manticore doesn't have any magic way of attacking through a defended wormhole, and Steve may have gotten a dozen of Princess Harriet's SD(P)s, but she had to have brought along the mines to hold the bridge."

"Your people, and the Manticorans, seem convinced she can't have enough left to make a major attack on the home system soon."

"That's obvious. Princess Harriet has to hold that bridge if she doesn't want Manticore moving into our sector in force. And she needed to do it fast, before we put in our own fixed defenses. So she took everything she thought she could spare from defending her home world and her conquests. And Steve blew away two thirds of it."

"So if that's the case, and, contrary to her assumption, Manticore and its allies are willing to send a force the long way, then we can make things very unpleasant for the Princedom next month."

[break]

Admiral Marrone had not expected to be in command of the hashed-together task force the Grand Alliance had lent to Rivendell to reclaim the terminus system and prevail on Harriet II Sanderson's government to refrain from any further attacks on Rivendell and its allies. Between an 8-ship Havenite squadron of the wall, an SD-sized CLAC, and screen, the Republic of Haven was contributing the most weight of metal. The six Manticoran wallers and screen and the Grayson carrier accompanying them were the most powerful elements and Marrone had seen enough of Manticorans and Graysons to know that their navies trusted each other on a truly fundamental level; there might be a few officers on either side that would complain but they dropped into mixed formations with an ease that only allies who had spent two decades fighting side by side could manage. But Caparelli and Thiesman had insisted; they were sending out in defense of Rivendellian territory… and neither Manticore nor Haven really wanted to be in a mixed task force commanded by the other this early in their alliance.

"I hope you don't think I'm being ungrateful." Marrone had told Rear Admiral Starks after they finished reviewing the logs of the battle at the terminus system. "We really do appreciate that you think Vice Admiral Carroll and his squadron did extraordinarily well for their first fleet engagement, and in fact the first for our wall of battle in centuries. And that your technical people think highly of our hardware based on what they've seen of it and how it performed in that battle.

"But a lot of my oldest friends are dead or prisoners right now, and we haven't been fighting fleet engagements every few months for a decade. Being assured they fought well isn't doing much for me right now."

"I'm not going to tell you it gets easier. I was a cruiser skipper when Haven hit us with 'Operation Icarus' and Manticore suffered its first serious defeats in the first war. But I believe your people aren't going to give up after one defeat, and that means there will be others eventually." Starks said. He was older than most Manticoran junior flag officers, but he'd been a merchant spacer with a reserve commission for a decade when the first war had started, and had gone back to civilian service in the years between the wars despite earning a commodore's star due to Janacek's downsizing. He'd been dragged back in for the second war and found himself tapped for an SD(P) division command, and had that upgraded to a squadron after the exercises with Marrone in the Manticore-B system.


	15. Chapter 14

14

When Admiral Thenuwara got the report back from her scout, she was surprised.

"Where could they possibly have gone too?" She asked.

"If someone tipped her off to the location of the elves' new wormhole, a smash and grab would be tempting to Harriet II Sanderson." Admiral Richt said. "They'd be even less happy with Manticoran involvement out here than we would. But the timing for that is pretty tight. Of course, it is possible Harriet II Sanderson's read battle summaries of the second Havenite war and had the same idea you did."

They'd pulled news of the new bridge off of Rivendell's public data networks; neither the military nor civilian officials Thenuwara and her staff spoke to at Rivendell mentioned the bridge outright. It had been clear the bridge's existence had been made public knowledge shortly before the secession vote, but not its location.

"I can't object to my opponent making things easier for me. I think we go ahead as planned, except scale back Hare to one battle squadron and screen."

[break]

Commodore Juan Tavares had served in the Princedom Navy for his entire adult life, and never had anticipated his current command in a navy which five years ago had no wall of battle and now had forty. Of course, for thirty years the Princedom had been working to have a powerful wall of battle ready when the cracks in the League became deep enough to exploit, but Tavares had been too junior to be aware of it until shortly before it happened. The Princedom had done well providing 'services' to OFS, but that didn't mean they intended to be some other system's client, not even the League's, forever.

It was easy to miss that short active duty cycles and long reserve commitments with regular refresher training gave the PSN far more trained manpower than its active-duty strength. And just as easy to miss that the Royal University had been producing, and Sanderson Yards hiring, far more engineers than they needed to design and build ships for a verge BC-level navy. The systematic refits of the PSN's older ships to incorporate far more automation was even more under the radar.

But Juan still had not anticipated being promoted from command of a BC to command of a 4-ship SD(P) division. And even though he knew it would be happening once his Princess' strategy had been outlined, being given explicit guidelines for when he was authorized to fire on the Solarian League Navy didn't line up with his preconceptions. Especially ones that amounted to 'unless they out mass your command by more than 3 to 1, go for it'. And a single battle squadron and screen had just transitioned into Nethril orbit from hyper.

"They haven't said anything yet, but it's probably the Sollies." One of his officers said. "Eight wallers, not six, so probably not elves. Too small to be Manty or Haven SDs, which means SLN SDs or Rivendell DNs. Acceleration is greater than standard for a Vega class SD, but below emergency max." It was out of character for the SLN to cut back their compensator margins, but it made more sense than any other possibility.

[break]

Vice-Admiral Misaki Oshigiri was no less expendable than Adrienne Brock, in Admiral Thenuwara's view. But unlike Brock, Oshigiri had been with Thenuwara since she had been tactical officer on Thenuwara's first SD. Which meant she was commanding the squadron in most danger for this operation. It was fleet politics, but it made sense. And there were no timid squadron commanders in 34th Fleet. Her father had, more than once, reminded her she was almost certainly sacrificing at least one star by not seeking a transfer out of 34th Fleet. She had – politely – told him what he could do with that suggestion. The League needed at least some people who knew how to fight, and Indira Thenuwara was the only full Admiral with a field command who believed that to be true.

"To the commander of the SDs in Nethril Orbit. Your presence here is in violation of the treaties between Nethril and the Solarian League, and it is therefore my duty to order you to withdraw from this system. Vice-Admiral Oshigiri, Solarian League Navy, out." Let them chew on that.

She had, as Tavares' officer noted, cut her compensator margins some. The last recorded compensator failure in Battle Fleet had been centuries ago. And the reports she had on Sanderson's SD(P)s suggested only marginal compensator advantages over the SLN. Considering she was giving up over a megaton on a waller by waller basis, if she ran at 90% rather than the stock 80%, the PSN's acceleration advantage was mostly negated. As for their other advantages… that was the purpose of her mission.

[break]

"Admiral Oshigiri, the Nethril system has reputed its treaties with the League and agreed to come under the protection of the Princedom of Sanderson. As such we must formally request that you withdraw. We advise you to remember what has happened in places like Manticore, Spindle, and New Tuscany before engaging an 'overmatched' enemy force." Tavares said. The mod 7's weren't the most reliable missile, but they outranged anything in the SLN's inventory by a huge margin, and his four SD(P)s could put out a volume of fire that eight _Vegas_ and screen couldn't hope to defend against. And they were already rolling pods.

[break]

"We believe that the government of Nethril agreed to your demands only after you forced this systems' regular Frontier Fleet and OFS forces to leave. As such, we cannot honor your new agreement and if you refuse to withdraw, you will be fired upon. And we would remind the Princedom that while its navy may have some new capabilities, it is not Royal Manticoran Navy. Oshigiri out." That ought to get him properly riled up.

Her wallers and screen were all carrying as many Cataphract-C pods as they could tow inside their wedges. It wasn't close to what a late-generation Manticoran tube SD – designed from the beginning to tow missile pods and built with the extra fire control to make full use of them – could manage. And despite the weaker warheads, she had Cataphract-B missiles in all of her SD's tubes. But, combined with eight SDs to his four, that would probably let her match his first salvo. Beyond that, she would be counting on Tortoise.

[break]

Tavares' division had been moving out to meet Oshigiri's squadron since shortly after it hypered in. He knew that inflicting a signature defeat on the SLN was considered a key part of the Princess' strategy, and it looked like he'd been handed an opportunity to do it.

So once Oshigiri's squadron was within maximum powered range of his missiles, he opened fire with double patterns from each of his SD(P)s. Someone noted in passing that a single SLN destroyer had fled to hyper just after Tavares' division fired, but Tavares put that down to some combination of panic and common sense.

[break]

It was without a doubt somewhat risky to wait until Tavares actually fired to move her missile pods outside the wedge. She'd moved the Halo platforms out already, as there was no doubt the PSN knew they existed and she'd need every bit of defensive ability she could get. Indeed, 34th Fleet doctrine sacrificed another pair of missile tubes beyond the Aegis system's standard for firing canisters of counter-missiles. There were limits to that approach; turning an SD into a slow ship with only a BC's offensive capability was a losing game. Still, it helped somewhat.

She fired back immediately after moving her pods beyond the interference of their ship's wedges, piling one surprise after another. The maximum powered range of the SLN's standard Trebuchet capital missile was far shorter than the range between the two forces. In fact, the range when she fired was greater than the all-powered range of Technodyne's Cataphract missiles, in either variant her fleet carried.

However, those missiles were capable of a short ballistic phase between the main drive and the sprint drive. Technodyne's people had neglected to mention that in the official documentation, but the 34th Fleet engineers who had looked them over insisted it ought to be possible and the software to handle that mode would have been built in as a matter of course. And the fleet's engineers had been correct; it had not taken much effort on their part to figure out how to use the ability. SLN sensors and electronics could manage effective fire control from longer ranges than a Cataphract's fully powered range, if not by much. Not much, though, was still enough.

Any Manticoran who had seen the Battle of Spindle or read the formal after-action reports would have been shocked to see what happened next. The weaknesses of official SLN doctrine and standard threat routines against massed MDM fire had been demonstrated quite clearly. In part, what happened was because the PSN's mod 7 missile was far inferior to the RMN's Mark 23 – although in most ways superior to Cataphracts the SLN carried. And hardware far inferior to the RMN's would have been the first hypothesis presented by any Manticoran analyst, if one happened to receive the records of the battle that was unfolding.

But the actual deciding factor that let the Oshigiri's squadron survive even one salvo from a force like Tavares' was that 34th Fleet had no use for official SLN doctrine or standard threat routines outside of exercises with the rest of Battle Fleet. And with the SLN's recent defeats, it had taken little effort for Admiral Thenuwara to convince Jared Richt and even Adrienne Brock to adopt them. They had been developed over years of simulations which assumed the reports of new weapons and tactics coming out of the Haven Sector were real, whether Battle Fleet's official intelligence organs admit that or not and which, unlike standard Battle Fleet simulations, did not have the winners determined in advance. And while 34th Fleet's personnel had no more combat experience than anyone else in Battle Fleet, they exercised routinely against each other, and with and against Frontier Fleet units and self-defense forces wherever the fleet was posted.

So Oshigiri's squadron and screen had presented a solid, tightly-integrated defense to the oncoming missile salvo. It helped that Tavares had done the obvious thing and targeted her wallers to start with, and had spread his fire among all eight. With SD(P)s firing double patterns against SLN SDs, that should have been reasonable. No one seemed to have informed the Solarians, though.

Her defenses were not enough to avoid taking damage. Her ships of the wall, after all, were still SLN Vega-class SDs, and no matter what she did in terms of cutting compensator margins and updating software and doctrine, the basic flawed nature of her SDs was still there. But her task was not to defeat Tavares herself. Her task was to gather information, and she was gathering it. Both in analyzing the electronic profile of the PSN's missiles, and in analyzing the PSN's response to her fire. Still, despite how well her squadron had defended itself so far, and the damage it managed to inflict on one of the PSN SD(P)s, Oshigiri knew quite well that in the long run she couldn't hold up against four podlayers, even as 'primitive' as the PSN's. Fortunately, she didn't have to.

[break]

"Another bogey just dropped out of hyper behind us." Someone informed Tavares. "Same profile as the group in front of us; it's got to be more Sollies. I should have known something was up when that destroyer hypered out so quickly."

"We still ought to be able to take bogey one and hyper out before they catch us." The commodore said, looking at the plot of the battle.

"Except for bogeys three, four, five, and six." Which had appeared within seconds of bogey two, each one almost certainly an SLN squadron of the wall and screen.

"_Harriet I_ is almost out of action already. We might be able to take bogey one before the others finish us off, but I don't think the Princess would thank us for it. Send a full action report and orders to head back to the capital to the patrol destroyers, then signal our surrender."


	16. Chapter 15

15

Caitlin Michaels was fighting the instinct to do something. The smart move, the move almost certain to work, was to wait until the next flight of Aes Sedai got out of the yards, and for Wes Marrone to get back taking the long way, with or without help from Manticore. If what had happened at the terminus system was any indication, the entire PSN had little chance of standing off 24 _Aes Sedai_-class DN(P)s with carrier support and a squadron or three of old-style DNs to underscore the Republic's displeasure at the Princedom. But she didn't have 24 right now; she had six. And massing her conventional wall – and all the _Callandor_ pods General Dynamics could build – would leave every system in the Republic dangerously uncovered and still leave the numbers in the PSN's favor.

And when her people reported Thenuwara was back with fifty-two of the wall instead of eight, she had just about decided that the worst case scenario for White City was coming true. Michaels thought that with her lone squadron of DN(P)s, the twelve conventional DNs Thenuwara knew were there, the six tucked away in hyper, and all of the LACs and missile pods in-system, she could beat 34th Fleet even if the most dangerous parts of Thenuwara's reputation were completely accurate. But she wouldn't have much of a fleet left after that. Fortunately the Solarian admiral had wanted to talk.

[break]

"I believe we can solve our problem if we work together." Thenuwara had suggested.

"Which problem would that be?" Michaels had said.

"I cannot see any way in which the Princedom of Sanderson's recent aggression could be of any benefit to the Rivendell Republic or the Solarian League. If my scouting parties' reports are accurate, I do not have sufficient forces to defeat what is at their home system, and two thirds of what was holding some of their recent conquests for them is missing. We suspect they moved on the terminus system for your new wormhole bridge in force, but have no way to be sure."

"They did. We lost a squadron of dreadnoughts and screen." There was no need for Thenuwara to know that Steve Carroll's screen included a CLAC's wing, or that his DNs were _Aes Sedai_. "Twelve of twenty SDs and all of their BCs were out of action by the end of the engagement. It wasn't safe for our dispatch boats to linger long enough for a thorough post-battle assessment."

"That's much better than I'd hoped, but still would leave twenty-eight Sanderson SD(P)s my scouts have seen against forty-eight _Vegas_. Which, no matter what Kingsford might say back on Earth, is probably not a ratio that is in favor of my fleet. I think you might be able to even the odds."

"We got a message through the wormhole to Spindle ahead of the conclusion of the battle. At the very least, the expedition we sent through is likely to return as quickly as possible without transiting our new bridge. If I were to wager, I'd expect some Manticoran assistance. Why shouldn't I wait for it?"

"They'll likely send enough to retake the terminus system. They likely will not send the numbers to kick the Princedom off of every world they've taken and defeat their home fleet." Thenuwara did not mention that was only true if one ignored the reports of the new Manticoran targeting system and its phenomenal long-range accuracy. Surely all of Manticore's new-built fleet had it, but she couldn't imagine diverting any ships with that system here.

"So what is your proposal?"

"That depends on what you can make available, but I if you can offer something like what I think you can, it's time to stop nibbling at the edges and strike at the heart of the Princedom."

[break]

Harriet II Sanderson watched repair crews swarm over the Princedom's ships that had been knocked out of the battle with Rivendell's DN(P)s. She'd anticipated taking losses; that was why she'd had two repair ships and a hospital ship left in hyper when she'd commenced her attack. She hadn't figured on anything close to this heavy. 6 BC(P)s had been completely obliterated by the elves' fire. Six more had needed to be scuttled; they would never fight again. Four had hyper generators or alpha nodes damaged beyond the capacity of even her repair ships to fix; they would get repairs last. But four of them had been repairable to almost their original capacity, and the survivors from the other BC(P)s that would not be returning to the Princedom could fill out their crews. Nearly the same ratio had held with the 12 SD(P)s that had been knocked out of combat by the end of the battle; 4 were lost entirely, 4 could not return to hyper… but 4 would be going back to her capital with her.

She had not been aware of the SLN admiral's reputation prior to her encounter with Juan Tavares. She knew some of it now, and her actions at Nethril had shown that reputation just might be earned. Still, she would like to see what the Solarian was capable of when she did not outnumber her opponent twelve to one. And she was not out of cards just yet.


	17. Chapter 16

16

Three precious weeks had been spent at Rivendell planning and drilling for the operation. Almost the entire first week had also been spent in rearranging the Rivendell Navy's assets that would be remaining in defense of its systems. Leaving 3 or 4 of the wall and forts as the heaviest defenses in-system for any system in the Rivendell Republic was stripping things thinner than Admiral Michaels would have liked to, but LAC production – and crew training – had been coming along well enough that she left the LACs of her other two CLACs in-system and had new birds for them at Rivendell. And her fourth CLAC had left the yards shortly before Thenuwara's second visit.

Her engineers – and General Dynamics' and Thenuwara's – had examined the captured PSN SD(P)s in detail. What they had found was a design that Rivendellian engineers could not help but feel a bit of distaste for, no matter how effective it was. 'Good enough' and 'better than anyone is likely to have out here' seemed to be the order of the day, and 'elegant' seemed a term the Princedom's engineers were wholly unfamiliar with. But for all that, a _Prince of Sanderson_-class SD(P) with mod 7 missiles would be brutally effective against almost any non-podlayer.

At least the exercises had stripped away a lot of preconceived notions. The Solarians were, for the most part, Battle Fleet, and they had been well aware of her people's reputation as people enamored with beautiful shiny new toys and that almost all of their officers had served in Frontier Fleet. The Rivendellians, on the other hand, had known exactly how incompetent Battle Fleet was. But now they were well aware that 34th Fleet was unlike any other in Battle Fleet, and that the Rivendell Navy's reputation as a comic-opera force had only the most passing intersection with reality.

The question of who would command the improvised allied fleet was a thorny one. After some consideration, Admiral Michaels had felt she had no choice but to go herself. At least in a simulator, she was the best fleet commander the Rivendell Navy had available, with Wes Marrone in Manticore and Steve Carroll dead or a prisoner of war. And her forces represented more actual combat power than Thenuwara's by a not insignificant margin. But the Sollies were bringing more than twice the tonnage of warships, and every SD the combined fleet had. That Thenuwara's SDs were just barely bigger than Michaels' DN's and smaller than her DN(P)s would be glossed over by a lot of people. That Thenuwara had commanded a squadron or more of wallers for decades, and Michaels never had would weigh on some minds. Rather more would consider that than those who would consider that in the simulated skirmishes with roughly even forces, Thenuwara had 'defeated' her more often than not.

In the end, though, Michaels was the uniformed commander of the Rivendell Navy. In the SLN, which she had been serving in only months ago, Thenuwara would have been senior. But here, Michaels clearly was. She still intended to listen to Thenuwara carefully; this was her idea, after all.

[break]

When Wes Marrone's task force arrived at Rivendell, they found far too few ships. For an instant, he'd been worried they had been wrong back at Manticore, and the Princedom had pressed beyond the terminus system despite their losses. But the shipyards still seemed hard at work. And for all that Commodore Wozniak's division was only a tiny portion of what Marrone would have expected as home fleet, nothing she said or did suggested the system had been attacked.

He wasn't surprised to see Admiral Park minding the store. He'd been the top uniformed officer in the Rivendell Navy before Caitlin Michaels' Frontier Fleet detachment had been absorbed. There'd never been much doubt that would be the case if White City had gone live any time in the last five years. It wasn't that Park wasn't a skilled administrator and fleet commander. Or his friend. But he wasn't Caitlin Michaels, either.

"Caitlin and the Council didn't think there was much choice but to take the Sollies up on their offer. They didn't expect you for another week at best, and did expect rather less support from our new allies."

"Which means if Thenuwara's people are right, we'll get to Sanderson just after they won a battle. Unless they're wildly wrong, absolute worst case the PSN will have been hurt badly. And quite frankly, what I've got with me could take the entire PSN unless they've got way more hardware that we don't know about. So I don't think we've got any choice but to go chasing after them."

[break]

It was only the four original squadrons of 34th Fleet and screen that made the initial transition into the Sanderson system. Or almost. Two of Rivendell's three surviving CLACs had been sent forward. The battle plan had been Admiral Thenuwara's idea; she could hardly complain about it. And the risk that two Rivendell CLACs would give away the game, between hiding them in the center of the formation and two sets of electronics warfare drones doing their best to make them look like an ammunition collier and a troop transport. Admiral Michaels had insisted on including the CLACs with Thenuwara's force; it would be far more exposed, she said, and the Rivendell Republic was not going to start its renewed independent existence by leaving allies in a position as exposed as only 32 SDs would be against the 24 remaining SD(P)s of the Princedom of Sanderson Navy.

When she had discovered only a single division guarded the Nethril system, Thenuwara had been able to free up her screen to make sure no first-hand reports made it to Sanderson any time soon. And the Nethril local government had been quite receptive to her instructions on what to tell the Princedom when they came looking for their missing SD(P)s.

Four belligerent battle squadrons seemed about right for what Harriet II Sanderson would expect as the Solarian response to her empire building. It seemed rude to disappoint her. What she had not figured on was that somehow there were 36 SD(P)s in-system, not 24.

[break]

The last flight of _Prince of Sanderson_-class SD(P)s had left the Princedom's yards only weeks ago. If the Princess had any other choice, those eight would still be working up. Indeed, if the 32 Vegas were all the SLN admiral had – and Nethril's governor insisted that was the case – she wouldn't need them. But whatever had happened at Nethril, Thenuwara had attacked an isolated detachment first, rather than heading straight for her capital. Everything she'd ever read of Solarian doctrine, and every Solly she'd ever worked with, would have done the latter. She gave a perfunctory refusal to the surrender demand without a thought, but something was wrong.

[break]

It was, Indira Thenuwara thought, very difficult to do the right thing in some situations as a defender. The amount of damage even one single-drive capital missile could do to a planet accidentally was terrifying. Trusting an enemy's targeting, or at least their auto-destruct protocols was frightening. But failing to trust them turned expensive, powerful fixed fortifications into a drain on manpower and resources. Harriet II Sanderson had concentrated her star nation's assets in ships, not fixed fortifications; the Princedom thought about what it could do it others, not what others could do to them. But it still had forts in orbit, and if Thenuwara's recon drones were accurate, those forts had been upgraded to handle the Princedom's new missiles. The PSN was charging out to meet her anyway.

Soon they would be committed to engaging her far closer to the hyper limit than they should. And that would be a mistake.

[break]

"Ma'am, there's something odd about those two mil-spec freighters in the middle of their formation."

The Princess examined the data. The elves lent them a hand. Not a big enough one.

[break]

Two hundred LACs exploded from Rivendell's carriers and took up station around its screen. Two weeks of exercises had let the SLN and Rivendell Navy evolve a doctrine for integrating those LACs into the defensive network around Indira Thenuwara's wall of battle. The results were impressive.

[break]

Targeting the LACs directly had been effective against Steve Carroll's lone squadron and single CLAC. But while Harriet II Sanderson had twelve more SD(P)s in her capital than she'd taken to the terminus system, she was facing 32 SDs, not six DNs. As much as SLN designs were lacking in anti-missile defenses, that still gave Thenuwara far more defensive firepower. Especially when her oversized – by SLN standards at any rate – screen added in. And if the Rivendell Navy's LACs lacked fission piles or beta-squared nodes or Grayson compensators, they still were able to accelerate to the limit of their compensators, unlike most older LACs. In a defense less desperate than they the battle of the terminus system, getting a clean shot at a Rivendell LAC was not an easy thing.

Moreover, nothing Thenuwara had let Nethril admit to should have given the PSN even a hint that her ships were all towing as many Cataphract-C pods as they could fit inside their wedges. Without records from second Manticore – _or the battle of Torch, which I'm not supposed to know about_ – they should be completely unaware she had the ability to fire from beyond single drive range. She did.

[break]

Even having experienced what Rivendell LACs could do once before, and even with some information on the capabilities of the enemy commander, the effectiveness of their defenses had been a surprise. Still, she had 36 SD(P)s against 32 Solarian pre-pod SDs. That would tell eventually.

"Go to double patterns, and focus on one squadron."

[break]

Vice-Admiral Misaki Oshigiri's squadron had not been sent out as bait this time, but they found themselves targeted just the same. She grasped her chair as her flagship took another hit. It was purely psychological. Anything that damaged the inertial compensator enough for her to feel a hit would likely kill everyone on the ship. But there wasn't a captain or admiral in space who didn't do it anyway. And it was just about time.

[break]

"Thirty-five of the wall just came out of hyper behind us." An officer reported. "CIC makes it 16 more _Vegas_, 12 Rivendell Navy _Assassins_, 6 _Aes Sedai_, and one Rivendell LAC carrier. And we're now getting a surrender demand in the name of the Rivendell Republic as well."

_And that was _really_ what my instincts were trying to warn me about_, the Princess thought.

"Re-designate the _Aes Sedai_ as the primary targets." Sanderson ordered. They were almost certainly the toughest ships in either of the opposition fleets. And it was certain any integrated defense networks were set up primarily to protect them, just as the Princedom's were keyed on her flagship. But sixty pre-pod wallers wouldn't beat her 32 SD(P)s, no matter what else they had. Rivendell's DN(P)s, though, could make the difference.

[break]

The lessons Steve Carroll's squadron had learned had not been lost on the Rivendell Navy either. Sanderson's BC(P)s had half the offensive firepower of their SD(P)s (if rather less than that in terms of sustained firepower), but far, far weaker defenses. They had been the obvious targets of the Cataphract-Bs from the tubes of the SLN's SDs, the Heronmarks from the tubes of the Rivendell Navy's BCs… and the Teldras from the Rivendell Navy's _Assassin_-class DNs.

The Rivendell Navy's shipyards had not spent the years between canceling the original _Aes Sedai_ design on the verge of production and the completion of the final DN(P) version of the _Aes Sedai_ class idling. The eighteen _Assassins_ that Rivendell intended to keep – and not tell anyone about – were refit extensively in that period. Compensators upgraded, sidewalls strengthened, bow and stern wall capabilities integrated, off-bore firing capability added … and the missile tubes rebuilt to handle the fusion-powered extended-range single drive Teldra capital missile. It wasn't quite a Callandor with a drive stage removed; the compensators and micro-fusion generator were a generation earlier, and the Teldra's single drive had a longer burn than one stage from a Callandor. But in fact a Teldra had a longer all-powered range that Cataphract-C, and rather closer to the all-powered range of a PSN mod 7 than Harriet II Sanderson would have liked. As she learned rather quickly, when _RNS Vladimir Taltos_ fired that missile for the first time in combat.

[break]

No ship of the wall had been lost yet on either side, but the exchange so far certainly favored the SLN and the Rivendell Navy. They had lost only a handful of LACs and Solarian-built light units while cutting through the PSN's BC(P)s like a scythe. _RNS_ _Saerin Asnobar_ and Admiral Oshigiri's squadron had taken heavy damage, as had almost half of the Princedom's wallers. And then the first SD(P) fell out of formation.

Harriet II Sanderson was hardly surprised it had been one from her newest squadron. If the second force had not appeared, she would have held them back. For all that she'd had programs in place for decades to bring her navy to its present size at the present time, a great many of her people were either new to the Princedom's service or lately recalled from an extended period in the reserves. Going into battle without the benefit of a shakedown cruise could hardly help. And she needed to take at least two SDs for every one she lost to win the battle. Three to have any chance of holding beyond that.

[break]

Caitlin Michaels, Indira Thenuwara, and Harriet II Sanderson could all see where things were going to end shortly after the first wallers were lost. The SLN/Rivendell alliance would lose more ships than it had expected – indeed, enough that in retrospect Admiral Michaels would have waited for Marrone's return, at the very least, before staging it – but they were going to carry the day. When each side had lost eight wallers, that was clear enough. It was still close enough that her enemies could make a mistake that would turn the tide, so Harriet II Sanderson kept on fighting.

"Twenty-two wallers and screen just hypered in, Admiral." Who? No one else around had any wallers to spare, certainly not that many. Unless…

"CIC makes it 6 of our _Aes Sedai_, 6 Manticoran _Invictus_-class SD(P)s, 8 Havenite _Temeraire_ class SD(P)s, one Grayson _Covington_-class CLAC, and one Havenite _Aviary_-class CLAC. It's got to be Admiral Marrone. In fact, he's on the FTL."

[break]

If there had been any chance of a reversal, Harriet II Sanderson would never have surrendered. But she had been losing when she had more podlayers than the enemy, if fewer wallers. When they suddenly had more than parity, and half of those podlayers Manticoran or Havenite ships which, no matter how much reports out of the League denied it, had triple-drive capital missiles with none of the compromises of her own mod 7s, it was time to admit defeat.


	18. Epilogue

Epilogue

"Do you think the Mandarins will accept this?" Admiral Michaels asked Admiral Thenuwara.

"Do you think the Council of Elrond will? Queen Elizabeth? President Pritchart?" She answered. "I think I can persuade them that removing the government responsible for the attacks on Solarian protectorates and seizing their home system is sufficient, that I never had sufficient force to move on Rivendell even if I thought it was a good idea, and that once Admiral Marrone's task force showed up you could have turned on us but did not. And of course systems like Nethril that had protectorate arrangements with the League were on a completely voluntary basis and if they should wish to terminate that agreement they are of course free to do so." Somehow she managed to say that last sentence with a straight face.

"I think the only place we could get the manpower for an occupying force is Haven, and that would take quite some time. And secession or no, and new alliance or no, I suspect your people are more comfortable with Sollies out here than Haventies." Admiral Starks said. "But there are going to be a lot of people back home upset that you didn't wait longer."

[break]

"You're sure we have to let Michaels' mutiny stand." Admiral Kingsford asked Admiral Thenuwara. Most of her fleet was still at Sanderson. She had made commitments that she was not entirely certain she trusted the rest of the SLN to keep just yet.

"They've clearly allied themselves with Manticore, and their alliance has sent heavy reinforcements to the system. The last flight of their _Aes Sedai_ class should commission soon as well – with all the enhancements Manticore could build into a waller nine months from completion. I'd need to concentrate most of the remaining active Navy to take Rivendell, and even then I'm not sure. The Rivendellians' missiles are at least a generation beyond the new Technodyne missiles we have, and there's nothing stopping Rivendell from stuffing pods with the Manticorans' all-up missiles instead of theirs. My recommendation is that we take the offered financial compensation for the ships and bases they appropriated, and accept their argument that we would have dismissed Rivendell citizens from the SLN after the Republic seceded from the League. We will never get a better offer, and cannot win one by force of arms."

"The Mandarins aren't going to like it."

"It's hardly the last thing they don't like that they're going to have to accept. It will take at least six months before one of our defense contractors revises the Princedom's pod SD design into something they're comfortable producing in volume. And I think you agree that Technodyne is no longer going to be an acceptable contractor for the SLN."

"And I can hardly cashier the only officer who has won a battle against a force with these new missiles, or captured a shipyard that knows how to make them."

"It's not place to say that, sir."

Kingsford thought it was amazing she could say that with a straight face, himself. And she probably meant it, too. If he drummed her out of the Navy – either on charges or just by creating a situation where she felt compelled to resign – his future in the SLN would not amount to much. Indira was unlikely to do anything herself, but the rest of her family was another matter.

[break]

"Well, that didn't play out as well as we could have hoped." Albrecht Detweiler told his son.

"I shouldn't have set this up without having a hole card to play if the Princess didn't bring enough to the table for our needs. And obviously other matters kept us from trying to pull something together on the fly, though I'm not sure where it would have come from if we'd tried. Coming up with a pretext to get one of the Factor navies involved would have been difficult, and using the Alignment Navy would have bound Manticore and Haven even more tightly to the elves and just maybe officially convinced the Sollies that the 'secret Mesan drive system' exists." Colin said.

"And you didn't believe Kingsford would give Indira Thenuwara the job, or that the elves' hardware was that good."

"We had put a fair amount of effort into convincing the SLN powers that be that she's a dangerous warmonger only left with a command because her family has too much influence. And having her killed would only have convinced Kingsford she was on to something. As for the other… we sometimes forget that we're not the only ones who can play a long game. In retrospect, it's clear the elves had at least been doing some R&D and contingency planning for quite some time. Whereas it hadn't occurred to us that we would need to seriously reevaluate our conventional hardware until Manticore made that obvious to anyone who was paying attention."

"At least House Sanderson was dealt with."

"Not as sharply as we could have hoped. Princess Harriet and her children are still alive and free."

"But with their throne reduced to a figurehead."

[break]

"It's hard to fault the elves on this, your highness." Honor Harrington told her queen.

"They basically handed the League an intact yard complex that produced 48 SD(P)s in five years, all its personnel, and more than a few of the SD(P)s themselves. And if they had waited even another week they wouldn't have needed to."

"They had no way of knowing what kind of support – if any – that we would send back with Admiral Marrone. Or even if he would return to Rivendell on his own initiative at all, let alone within hours of news reaching Manticore. They were looking at waiting another year to move on the Princedom out of their own resources, and who knew what kind of allies they could find in that time? From what Rivendell – and Admiral Starks' people – tell us, it seems very unlikely the Mesans will get Sanderson's designs while 34th Fleet holds the Princedom. Besides, it is now almost certain that if the League wants to move against us seriously, they'll try and hand Thenuwara the job."

"And why is that a good thing?" Discovering someone as competent as Indira Thenuwara – or any of her subordinate flag officers, for that matter – existed in the SLN had been a shock.

"She understands the world as it actually is, and is disinclined to throw away men unnecessarily. That can only help us."


End file.
